My guess is that string theory will end somewhere between complete success and failure. By totally useless I mean that it remains a beautiful piece of pure mathematics. By totally successful I mean that it is a complete theory of physics, explaining all the details of particles and their interactions. I consider it unlikely that string theory will turn out to be either totally successful or totally useless. I tell you my guess, just to give you something to think about. I have no illusion that I can predict the future. String theorists make strenuous efforts to deduce consequences of the theory that might be testable in the real world, so far without success.įinally, I give you my own guess for the future of string theory. The theory remains in a world of its own, detached from the rest of physics. The theory is not yet testable by experiment. And third, there is not yet any proof that the theory is relevant to physics. They believe that their theory describes something real in the physical world. Second, the string theorists think of themselves as physicists rather than mathematicians. Most remarkably, it gave the mathematicians new methods to solve old problems that were previously unsolvable. It has opened up a whole new branch of mathematics, with new ideas and new problems. The leading pure mathematicians, people like Michael Atiyah and Isadore Singer, love it.
First, what they are doing is first-rate mathematics.
Occasionally I understand a little of what they are saying. Physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson on string theory:īut when I am at home at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, I am surrounded by string theorists, and I sometimes listen to their conversations.