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the idea that string theory provides something like an account of "ultimate reality" is itself a religious idea. it's not that far from the kind of stuff i just sat through in that ramtha infomercial dressed up as a feature film about the "quantum physics lifestyle"....this is not a remark about string theory itself, but rather about the claims some folk make about string theory--it is an example of what i was talking about in the last of the many digressions in the post above--strange assumptions that get dragged from one register into another when you shift scale/system.
btw i got into a long argument with a physicist who does this stuff at a party. what he is doing sounds interesting--but what he says it *means* (once he wanders outside the modelling itself) is just---well----gunk that only makes sense because he is himself inclined to want to believe and can't believe in the sense that organized religion would have him do, so this provides a way around all that.
there is a book---henri atlan's "from enlightenment to enlightenment"----that addresses this kind of cross-chatter (science/mysticism) in quite sophisticated ways that i'd recommend--before stuff like the tao of physics, which will lead you straight back into the string theory as the ultimate reality/manifestation of god thing. it is sadly a rare thing to read scientists who are also good philosophers. this guy is one. most aren't. and because they aren't. it's good to be skeptical abotu claims as to meaning.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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