String Theory → Theology

I enjoyed the recent Blogging Heads dialogue between John Horgan and George Johnson, in part because I could follow the whole thing without falling asleep. But the comments about string theory were really over the top and kind of disturbing. I enjoyed Lee Smolin's jeremiad against string theory, The Trouble With Physics, but at least he acknowledged that his own camp was in a definite minority. In the exchange Horgan deems string theory "pseudoscience" and analogizes it to theology. You'd expect the author of The End of Science and The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation to pull no punches. Horgan is a Pyrrho for our age, but he makes himself a caricature with such statements, credibility is given to proportionate statements, not bombastic ones. Later on in the discussion Horgan dismisses the Christian theism of Simon Conway Morris, a prominent paleontologist, as medieval superstition, so the association he makes between theology and string theory seems particularly a rank insult coming from him. Theology is the reasoned analysis of the idea of God. Clearly string theory does not address the same content as theology (i.e., God), so Horgan must be suggesting that the methods of string theorists are like those of theologians. I think not. If string theory is like theology, then so is most of higher mathematics which remains obscure to the eye of the non-specialist. The problem with string theory is its lacks of plain empirical falsifiability, or at least the perception of such. But, one assumes that the physicists who work in this area operate with some modicum of mathematical rigor which can be open to analysis and critique, to a far greater extent then the circumlocutions around a priori truths which are the hallmark of consensus theology. Of course, Sean Carroll has a post up which addresses the major points. Science and scientists are mostly wrong at any given time (at least to the infinitely precise level of description), there's no shame in that. Perhaps the whole field of string theory is wrongheaded, but that doesn't make them shamans or quacks, it simply means that the corrective functions of science have not come to the fore. Yet. Though we sin the faith lives on and we shall be redeemed!Addendum: Let me be less cryptic about my contentions regarding theology: I believe that this "science" is fundamentally one which will always confirm the revealed truths of the sponsoring faith. That is, I do not believe that the verbal logic employed by theologians is really very rigorous, and so social consensus and pressure, as well as individual bias, will load the die. Christians will find their theology compelling, Muslims will be enraptured by their kalam, while Eastern philosophers will admire their metaphysical insights. I believe theology is powerfully "canalized" by culture. I believe science is less canalized, while I believe mathematics is the least canalized of all. String theory may not be good (or correct) science, but it is not canalized by the surrounding culture in the way theology is (though there is likely certainly a cultural mass psychology at work within the culture of theoretical physics).1 - Obviously I can't follow the details of the physics so I wasn't convinced of Smolin's characterization of string theory in the specifics vs. quantum loop gravity, rather, his sketch of the way science works was, I think, often quite accurate in its highlighting of the flaws in the culture.