James Read - "On Functional Freedom and Penrose’s Critiques of String Theory"

Talk by James Read (Oxford)
Seminar Website: harvardfop.jac...
UA-cam Channel: / @foundationsofphysicsh...
Foundations of Physics @Harvard Seminar Series
April 30, 2024
Abstract: In his The Road to Reality as well as in his Fashion, Faith and Fantasy, Roger Penrose criticises string theory and its practitioners from a variety of angles ranging from conceptual, technical, and methodological objections to sociological observations about the string theoretic scientific community. In this talk, I assess Penrose’s conceptual/technical objections to string theory, focussing in particular upon those which invoke the notion of ‘functional freedom’.
(Based upon joint work with Matěj Krátký (Oxford); preprint available here: philsci-archive...)