Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Historical and Conceptual Background
- Part II Theory Assessment beyond Empirical Confirmation
- 6 The Significance of Non-Empirical Confirmation in Fundamental Physics
- 7 The Dangers of Non-Empirical Confirmation
- 8 No Alternative to Proliferation
- 9 Physics without Experiments?
- 10 Scientific Methodology: A View from Early String Theory
- 11 What Can We Learn from Analogue Experiments?
- 12 Are Black Holes about Information?
- Part III Cosmology and Testability
- Part IV Prospects for Confirmation in String Theory
- Index
7 - The Dangers of Non-Empirical Confirmation
from Part II - Theory Assessment beyond Empirical Confirmation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2019
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Historical and Conceptual Background
- Part II Theory Assessment beyond Empirical Confirmation
- 6 The Significance of Non-Empirical Confirmation in Fundamental Physics
- 7 The Dangers of Non-Empirical Confirmation
- 8 No Alternative to Proliferation
- 9 Physics without Experiments?
- 10 Scientific Methodology: A View from Early String Theory
- 11 What Can We Learn from Analogue Experiments?
- 12 Are Black Holes about Information?
- Part III Cosmology and Testability
- Part IV Prospects for Confirmation in String Theory
- Index
Summary
In the book String Theory and the Scientific Method,Richard Dawid describes a few of the many non-empirical arguments that motivate theoretical physicists’ confidence in a theory, taking string theory as case study. I argue that excessive reliance on non-empirical evidence compromises the reliability of science, and that precisely the case of string theory well illustrates this danger: Being Bayesian on positive hints, and Popperian when things go wrong, is not rational, but rather is blindness.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Why Trust a Theory?Epistemology of Fundamental Physics, pp. 120 - 124Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
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