M-Theory - the Grand Design?
Any attempt to unite gravity and Quantum Mechanics enters a domain far beyond the cutting edge of experimental research. The realm of scientific research and investigation has thus far moved from things we can see such as stars, planets, rocks and apples in the days of Newton, to theories revolving around things we can’t see but whose effects (energetic vibrations) we can feel and measure in the time of Maxwell, to increasingly inaccessible notions such as Einsteinian space-time in the early twentieth century
Quantum Mechanics has taken this inaccessibility even further. The Schrödinger probability wave introduced a radically new and vital mathematical construct which is accepted by scientists even though its central tenets are unobservable and no one really knows how it works[1]. With string/M-theory, we delve even deeper into a world beyond scientific investigation so there no alternative but to work with theoretical models, generally of the mathematical kind. We have now entered the world of model dependent realism.[2]
Despite its lack of susceptibility to verification in experimental form, Stephen Hawking has given M-theory his imprimatur as the only present candidate for a complete theory of the universe (his emphasis). “If it is finite – and this has yet to be proved”, he says, “it will be a model of a universe that creates itself. We must be part of this universe, because there is no other consistent model. M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find. … If the theory is confirmed by observation, it will be the successful conclusion of a search going back more than 3,000 years. We will have found the grand design”[3].
[1] Greene (2011), 167-168.
[2] Hawking and Mlodinow (2011), 7, 43.
[3] Hawking and Mlodinow, The Grand Design (2011), 181.
Quantum Mechanics has taken this inaccessibility even further. The Schrödinger probability wave introduced a radically new and vital mathematical construct which is accepted by scientists even though its central tenets are unobservable and no one really knows how it works[1]. With string/M-theory, we delve even deeper into a world beyond scientific investigation so there no alternative but to work with theoretical models, generally of the mathematical kind. We have now entered the world of model dependent realism.[2]
Despite its lack of susceptibility to verification in experimental form, Stephen Hawking has given M-theory his imprimatur as the only present candidate for a complete theory of the universe (his emphasis). “If it is finite – and this has yet to be proved”, he says, “it will be a model of a universe that creates itself. We must be part of this universe, because there is no other consistent model. M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find. … If the theory is confirmed by observation, it will be the successful conclusion of a search going back more than 3,000 years. We will have found the grand design”[3].
[1] Greene (2011), 167-168.
[2] Hawking and Mlodinow (2011), 7, 43.
[3] Hawking and Mlodinow, The Grand Design (2011), 181.