String theory quotes

I'm on record as not being a fan of string theory. My objection is not that it is necessarily wrong, but that we probably won't know one way or another for a very long time.

Recently I've been looking at the blog of Peter Woit, a Columbia math professor who was originally trained as a particle theorist, and a very outspoken critic of string theory. Try his Jan. 11, 2005 post (for some reason the trackback URL doesn't work) for some juicy comments on the current state of string theory. In the interest of fairness, you can also have a look at the blogs of string theorists Lubos Motl or Jacques Distler.

I thought I would list, just for fun, some comments by famous physicists about string theory (all are Nobelists except Woit :-):

Woit: "... string theory ... has given up any claims to being a legitimate science and has taken on the characteristics of a cult. ...I just can't believe the way essentially the entire particle theory establishment, including many people I have the highest respect for, continue to allow this situation to go on without public comment. ..."

Richard Feynman: in Davies and Brown, Superstrings, Cambridge 1988, pp. 194-195:"... I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! ...I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. ... I don't like it that they're not calculating anything. ...why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers ... have no explanations in these string theories - absolutely none! ... "

Sheldon Glashow: "... superstring theory ... is, so far as I can see, totally divorced from experiment or observation. ...string theorists ... will say, "We predicted the existence of gravity." Well, I knew a lot about gravity before there were any string theorists, so I don't take that as a prediction. ... there ain't no experiment that could be done nor is there any observation that could be made that would say, "You guys are wrong." The theory is safe, permanently safe. I ask you, is that a theory of physics or a philosophy? ..."

Phil Anderson:"Is string theory a futile exercise as physics, as I believe it to be? It is an interesting mathematical specialty and has produced and will produce mathematics useful in other contexts, but it seems no more vital as mathematics than other areas of very abstract or specialized math, and doesn't on that basis justify the incredible amount of effort expended on it.

My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance. It proposes that Nature is the way we would like it to be rather than the way we see it to be; and it is improbable that Nature thinks the same way we do."