Understanding String Theory Research in Its Environment

Understanding string theory research in its environment

David van den Berg Supervised by: dr. Sebastian de Haro Olléand prof. Hans Radder Second corrector: dr. Federica Russo October 2020 Abstract This thesis explores string theory research and its practice through Ziman’s (2000) lens of post-academic science. Starting from a thorough analysis of Ziman’s concept, the work changes course and looks at the recent history, the pre-history, the methodology and the epistemic issues surrounding string theory research. Thereafter it weighs Ziman’s claims, where string theory functions as a case study. But although Ziman’s claims are weighed, this thesis is not primarily interested in agreeing or disagreeing with Ziman’s text. Rather, it tries to identify the forces from inside and outside the university that shape string theory research, and the extent of their influence. From the many narratives that are encountered in the analysis of string theory research, history and post-academic science, I focus on the narratives of: technoscience, neoliberalism and financialisation—because of their strong entanglement with string theory research. I conclude that there is a complex but strong connection between all these narratives and string theory research. A part of string theory research cannot be described as ‘pure’ science but should rather be identified as technoscience (Latour, 1987). String technoscience has an intimate relationship with the prevailing neoliberal order, and especially with the related rise of financial capital. Contents

1 Introduction 5 1.1 Some notes on method ...... 6 1.2 Using the Web of Science Core Collection ...... 7

2 Academic and post-academic science 9 2.1 Academic science ...... 10 2.2 The academic ethos ...... 10 2.2.1 Communalism ...... 11 2.2.2 Universalism ...... 11 2.2.3 Disinterestedness, humility ...... 12 2.2.4 Originality ...... 13 2.2.5 Scepticism ...... 13 2.3 From academic to post-academic science ...... 14 2.3.1 Specialisation and collectivisation ...... 14 2.3.2 Tenure ...... 15 2.3.3 Academic science in society ...... 16 2.3.4 Growth ...... 17 2.3.5 Politics ...... 17 2.3.6 Industry ...... 18 2.3.7 Bureaucracy ...... 19 2.3.8 Evolutionary science ...... 19 2.4 Post-academic science ...... 20 2.5 The post-academic ethos ...... 21 2.5.1 From communal to proprietary ...... 21 2.5.2 From universal to local ...... 22 2.5.3 From disinterested to authoritarian ...... 23 2.5.4 From original to commissioned ...... 24 2.5.5 From sceptical to expert ...... 25

3 String theory and its prehistory 26 3.1 Antecedent: quantum theory ...... 26 3.1.1 War, migration and the American style . . . . 27 3.1.2 European foundations: ontology and epistemology of Einstein and Bohr ...... 35 3.2 The aim and ontology of string theory ...... 37 3.3 The method of string theory ...... 41

4 Is string theory within the realm of post-academic science? 47 4.1 Informal communication structures ...... 47 4.2 Epistemic pollution; is string theory linked with private and political entities? ...... 51 4.3 Local, specialised and technical knowledge ...... 60 4.4 Working in projects; is the variety of ideas within the string community hampered? ...... 70 4.5 A career in string theory ...... 73

2 5 Conclusion; post-academic science and complementary narratives 75

A A brief technical history of the development of string theory 82

Bibliography 87

3 I would like to thank Hans Radder for his many very close readings of my drafts and for teaching me, amongst many other things, the importance of the meanings of words. I owe a lot of insight into the string community, as well as into much else to Sebastian de Haro Oll´e. I would like to thank Federica Russo for giving her insightful, non-masculine views on this work.

4 1 Introduction

Physicist and philosopher John Ziman (1996a, p. 752) states: “. . . what counts as scientific knowledge at any given moment – is obviously influenced by how science is organised. . . ”. And, also: “Changes in the social framework of science eventually lead to changes in its philosophical principles”. The organisation of science changes over time. Notably, according to a number of authors, a shift occurred in the way research is organised somewhere in the second half of the twentieth century. New notions have been introduced to understand the novel research culture. These include post-academic science (Zi- man, 2000), Mode 2 science (Gibbons et al., 1994) and technoscience (promoted by Hottois and Latour, 1987, see: Nordmann et al., 2011). This shift in how knowledge is produced is, of course, not the first in the western academic tradition; academic science itself succeeded another system. The narrative central to this thesis, Ziman’s (2000) post-academic science model, identifies the academic science culture originating in the 17th century, induced by Newtonian empirical and mathematical physics (Ziman, 2000). Although Ziman (1996a, p. 754) identifies a number improvements that postacademic science can accomplish, he is worried about other, related developments. Especially a suspected decline in respect for objectivity: ‘The complex fabric of democratic society is held together by trust in this objectivity, exercised openly by scientific experts. Without science as an independent arbiter, many social conflicts could only be resolved by reference to political authority or by a direct appeal to force.’ Indeed, understanding research culture is vital for producing good science. Although often portrayed as an endeavour isolated from subjectivity, it seems that basic science and its organisation are not immune to the new trend in research culture. According to Gibbons et al. (1994, p. 100): It has even been argued that control of the natural sciences has never been wrested for any length of time from the hands of restricted interest groups—which supposedly explains why revolutions in science and technology, unlike those in the humanities and some social sciences, have never posed a threat to the existing order. The separ- ation from politics which the natural sciences strove to maintain over centuries and which the humanities and the social sciences were never able to enjoy is no longer tenable. And on the latter point Ziman (1996a, p. 753) agrees: ‘even the most basic research does not take place in a power vacuum. ’. String theory research has been built on the foundations laid by quantum field theory research. A field that came into existence in a time in which the size, the geography and the structure of theoretical physics changed dramatically. The second world war and the

5 cold war saw physics and quantum field theory get access to nearly inexhoustible funds. This soon changed the scale of departments and, in retrospect, has put a significant mark on the way theoretical physics is done, even today. Indeed, a ‘basic’ science that was prac- ticed and constructed in all but a ‘power vacuum’. But, when funds evaporated at the end of the cold war, at least some disinterested physics revived (Kaiser, 2011). This thesis is an analysis of where we stand now. In short, it explores string theory research and its practice through Ziman’s (2000) lens of post-academic science. Starting from a thorough analysis of Ziman’s concept (I follow Ziman (2000) quite literally), the work changes course and looks at the recent history, the prehistory, the methodology and the epistemic issues surrounding string theory research. Thereafter it weighs Ziman’s claims, where string theory functions as a case study. But although Ziman’s claims are weighed, this thesis is not primarily interested in proving or disprov- ing—agreeing or disagreeing with—Ziman’s text. Rather, to learn in what relation string theory research stands to the world and (research) culture. It looks for the many kinds of forces from inside and outside the university that shape string theory research, and the extent of their influence. Beyond Ziman’s (2000) work, this thesis tries to place string theory research in, find relations with, other narratives from without the natural sciences. From the many narratives that are encountered in the analysis of string theory research, history and post-academic science, I focus on the narratives of: technoscience, neoliberalism and finanacialisation—because of their strong entanglement with string theory research. I conclude that there is a complex but strong connection between all these narratives. A part of string theory research cannot be described as ‘pure’ science but rather as technoscience. String technosciene has an intimate relationship with the prevailing neoliberal order, and especially with the related rise of financial capital.

1.1 Some notes on method This document is mainly (not exclusively) the result of a personal learning trajectory in thoughts thought by scholars engaged in the ﬁelds of philosophy, history and sociology of science, over the last century. Starting from an education that was focused on theoretical and mathematical physics I encountered unchartered territory. In a sense, this thesis is thus mostly written for myself. The fruits picked up along the way can, however, be of interest both to scholars whose daily work is in string physics and also to scholars from outside the string community who try to wrap their head around the mysterious worlds of strings and branes; as for example has been done by two scholars who started their learning trajectory in biology: Haraway (1994) and Pigliucci (2019). The educational character of this thesis reveals itself most prom-

6 inently in its method, as it is primarily based on literature, little on ﬁeldwork. New data have been gathered but only through an of-the- shelf bibliometric analysis tool. In the selection of literature that is referenced throughout this text I chose lines of thought that resonated with my own, but—unable to evade the subjective in selection while condensing broad and complex academic discourses to concise and convincing narratives—these views are not always subscribed to by everyone (see for example: Galison, 2017, p. 25).

Notation Throughout this document chapters and sections are referred to using square brackets. [3.2.2] means, see also section 3.2.2.; [A] refers to appendix A.

1.2 Using the Web of Science Core Collection For ﬁgures 1, 3 and 4 and tables 2 and 1 I rely on an online bibliometric database and analysis tool by Clarivate Analytics Web of Science. The results of the analyses with this electronic aid are inﬂuenced by the programming choices of its creators. The workings are, however, traceable, quite straightforward and described below.

Database The only database used is the Web of Science Core Collection. It is a pay-walled database of journals, books and proceedings selected on quality and impact criteria by editors. It covered over 5800 journals in natural sciences and engineering in 2016, approximately 33 per cent of known periodicals in these ﬁelds (Mongeon and Paul-Hus, 2016). According to its website this has increased to 9200+ journals. The database is often used for bibliometric research. A special feature of the database often used here is the complete indexation of stated funding agencies.

Searching and analysing articles All search queries in this paper use the ’Topic’ searching ﬁeld in the Web of Science portal. The given term is compared to the title, abstract and author keywords of all entries in the database. Additionally, the database generates a set of extra keywords for each article from the often recurring terms in the titles of articles cited by the article in question (known as Keywords Plus, see: Garﬁeld and Sher, 1993). Note that using Keywords Plus means that analysis results can vary slightly as time progresses, as articles can be linked to keywords a posteriori through keywords of articles in which they are cited after publication. For each graph and table I mention the search terms in the caption, unless mentioned the search terms are entered in quotation marks such that the query only returns articles matching the

7 speciﬁc given word combination without lemmatisation1. All articles of which the title, abstract, author keywords or Keywords Plus match the searched terms literally (non case sensitive) are returned. The often large collection of returned articles can be numerically analysed using the Clarivate Analytics “analyze results” tool. Articles can be included or excluded on many parameters including year and funding agency.2

1The Oxford dictionary deﬁnes ‘lemmatise’ as: ‘sort so as to group together inﬂected or variant forms of the same word’ 2See: https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/ webofscience-scie/, and: https://images.webofknowledge.com/WOKRS522_ 2R1/help/WOK/hs_topic.html, accessed: 17.2.2020.

8 2 Academic and post-academic science

The notion of ‘good scientific practice’ changes over time. Science is in part a social endeavour. It involves groups of people who inter- act and, together with the rest of society, scientists form consensus for what is good science. The strongly related concept of knowledge is also partly social and not limited to a sum of all written knowledge. Knowledge is related to what individuals know, it is gen- erated, altered, interpreted and communicated by imperfect human minds. John Ziman (1996a) and others (e.g. Nordmann et al., 2011 or Ylijoki, 2010) claim that social factors in knowledge production, or: a prevailing research culture, has a significant influence on scientific output. Epistemology depends on the social structures that researchers are subjected to. In Ziman’s model (Ziman, 2000) the academic science culture is the prevailing research culture in the nineteenth and twentieth century. In this sub-culture of modernity the ideal scientist is ‘a lone seeker after the truth’. In the second half of the 20th century various researchers identify a significant change, sometimes referred to as a break, away from academic science culture. To clarify this change Ziman (1996a) introduces the term post-academic science. To research ‘post-academic science’ culture Ziman (2000) uses a study of research culture by Robert Merton (1973).3 From Merton’s four norms of academic science Ziman identifies five distinguishing features that form the ethos of academic science culture. These features are: universality, disinterestedness, scepticism, originality and communalism. Ziman (1996a) discusses the prevalence of this academic science ethos for current science culture and finds that the attitude towards these five pillars has changed, in some cases, dramatically.4 An ethos, describing the consensus about what is good science, does not fully describe a research culture. Other important aspects are the bureaucratic, power and financial structures and the advent of ‘big science’; these cause a new social dynamic and eventually a new science. This chapter begins by introducing the academic science culture model and continues to identify the elements that constitute the post-academic science culture model, both by John Ziman. The following sections give an account of the ideas presented in ‘Real Science-What it is, and what it means’ in which Ziman (2000) gives a detailed account of his models. Throughout this chapter numbers between round brackets refer to the relevant pages of Ziman’s (2000)

3Ziman uses his own version of Merton’s model to study the difference between academic and post-academic science in a structured manner. But they were once conceived by Merton ‘as structural elements in a theoretical model of the scientific culture. Nowadays they are often regarded as no more than useful words for moralising about actions and ideals in scientific life.’ (Ziman, 2000, p. 32) 4The actual description by Merton (1973) includes only four norms, originality was added by Ziman. In addition, Ziman changes Merton’s norm of communism into the softer communalism.

9 book.

2.1 Academic science To frame academic science in time, the logical method is to look for a clear historical discontinuity, which however does not exist. Taking the publication of Newton’s Principia (1687) or the founding meeting of the British Royal Society (1660) as the birth of academic science is incomplete because many of its social practices find their origins later in time. These include, among other: systematic publication of research findings, membership criteria for academic communities, and academic employment (30). Failing a clear historical discontinuity for the timeframe of academic science, Ziman (2000) proposes a temporal cut-off in the first half of the nineteenth century: This [the first half of the nineteenth century] was the period when a self-consciously scientific culture – applying as much to history, theology, linguistics and the other humanities as to the natural sciences – emerged in the state universities of pre-unified Germany. This culture dif- fused, by direct imitation or by convergent co-evolution, throughout Continental Europe and the English-speaking world. In other words, in talking about ‘academic science’ we are referring to a distinctive social institution that has existed in advanced countries in something like its present form for rather more than a century. (30) Academic science is continuously changing, rendering the cut-off date arbitrary to some degree. However, this lower bound enables a work- able frame that is in line with the public notion of (academic) science.

2.2 The academic ethos The lack of official rules and a formal structure make a career in academic science different from other vocations. Academic science can be seen as a ‘self perpetuating tribe’ governed by unspoken rules varying per discipline. Ziman uses a description by Robert Merton (1973) which states that each disciplinary sub-tribe has a detailed set of ‘proscriptions, prescriptions, preferences and permissions’, but – as identified by the general public – the many rules in the sub-tribes span a smaller set of norms governing a general ‘academic tribe’. These general norms taken together form an ethos which clarifies the ideal practice for the members of the tribe. The norms tend to conflict with ‘tribal’ values such as loyalty and group cohesion. Indeed, the norms are in place to oppose such behaviour. The existence of norms in the community implies that breaking them can be attractive. A description of an academic ethos does not describe academic science in full and there is no unique set of norms to describe the academic institution. Ziman proposes the mentioned set of norms

10 spanning the academic ethos including: Communalism, Universalism, Disinterestedness, Originality and Scepticism. He wants to use these norms as a ‘row of pegs on which to hang a naturalistic account of some of the social and psychological features of science’ (31-33). A synopsis of his analysis makes up the remainder of this section.

2.2.1 Communalism Communalism (33-36) is closely related to communication. The norm requires that scientific results are public property. This prohibition of secrecy demands an elaborate communication infrastructure that takes up a significant part of the available research time and funds. It further requires no unnecessary delay in publication of results after findings. In practice not all contact between scientists can live up to the high standards of communal or formal communication, causing the division of informal communication and formal communication. In- formal communication takes part in the hallways and over coffee tables and is not public; whereas papers are strictly written in formal language, with communalism at the base of its charter. This division leads to the existence of the ‘academic archive’. In the vast academic archive there is place for papers, books and other texts that live up to the standards that follow from the academic ethos [2.2.2–2.2.5]. These documents have been officially accepted by the academic community and are thereby turned into communal knowledge. Indeed, sustaining this archive, its quality and its accessibility is vital to ensure communal knowledge, but the importance of the academic archive reaches beyond the safekeeping of communalism and even the other four norms. Its central role in the academic world also has impact on the way scientists communicate, plan a career and gain their livelihood.

2.2.2 Universalism Not anything written by a scholar can enter the academic archive. The norm of universalism (36-38) is in place to make sure that the criteria of acceptance are not trivial. Gender, age, race and nation- ality are criteria that should not discriminate wether a document can enter the archive; universalism tells us not to exclude anything based on attributes of the person who creates, but solely on basis of the ideas presented. The exclusion of certain criteria does not actively solve discrim- ination that is due to historical or social unbalance. The abundance of white males leads inherently to gender and race bias. But before women earned the right to work alongside men and even after, women faced exclusion from the scientiﬁc world although a certain form of universalism was in place. Indeed in the heyday of academic science there were very few women active in science. Ziman states

11 that universalism cannot thrive in authoritarian monocultures such as Nazism or fundamentalist religious regimes. The fact that behaviour that does not agree with the norm of universalism is punished severely and looked down on implies the success of the norm within the scientific community. Indeed, with respect for and by its members the academic scientific community is regarded as fair and meritocratic. Outside formal communication universalism does not have to be guaranteed, scientists are allowed to do anything within the law, they may be nationalists or vote for racist politicians as long as they follow the established universal conventions in their formal scientific work. According to Ziman a relation exists between unification and the social norm of universalism (56 & 2.4). The collection of all fields and specialisations may be modelled as a stack of maps of different scale (126-132). Thinking about this stack of maps, ‘universal’ knowledge would imply the existence of a most fundamental map that holds the information to draw up all the other maps. The merger of separate theories into a more fundamental theory, such as e.g. the effort of string theory tries to achieve, is indeed regarded as advancement in science. The norms of communalism and universalism form a joint force that aims to eliminate ‘apparent’ inconsistencies between theories (321-322). Although, whether unification is in principle possible and desired is highly contested (131, 324 & e.g. Dawid, 2013) as it paves the way for reductionism. ‘Strong reductionism’ (325) or ‘theory reduction’ (Mayr, 1988) puts forward the idea that higher level theories (e.g. chemistry) and the associated phenomena can be completely reproduced and explained causally from a more ‘fundamental’, lower level theory (e.g. physics). This strong reductionist thesis is speculative for various reasons. Especially, it seems to be unable to deal with the evolutionary processes of life and its magnificent diversity (323-325) [3.2]. The universalism of knowledge is both enhanced and restricted by the use of mathematics and formal language. Mathematics is exact but suffers syntactic restrictions. Contrary, informal language is sloppy but can be used to convey almost any thought. Formal language improves on disorder but is—like mathematics—specialised and therefore unnatural to the public and thus restricted. Last, much like language science uses metaphors and is therefore culturally influenced and thus restricted in its universalism (in the sense of unification) (132-142).

2.2.3 Disinterestedness, humility Scientists, when acting out their profession, are supposed to present themselves as humble and invulnerable to non-scientiﬁc pressure. The norm of disinterestedness (38-40) causes papers (and other formal communication) to be written in an exclusively impersonal manner with a reference to every bit of prior research that is used, how-

12 ever minor. Because scientists aren’t expected to be influenced in their scientific work, they don’t have to mention all their affiliations. They are however expected to show modesty by giving grateful ac- knowledgements to scientists enabling a piece of research. No formal instrument guarantees disinterestedness. The deeply rooted principle is preserved by a sociological force within the community, transmit- ted from generation to generation. Credibility is critical for any scientist to the extent that any minor flaw breaching disinterestedness is socially regarded as unacceptable and brings about serious consequences. In the case disinterestedness is breached by strictly forbidden dis- honesty about interests it is not the norm of disinterestedness, but rather the norms of scepticism (a reprimand through peer review) and communalism (no access to the archive) that make sure that a wrongdoer is punished.

2.2.4 Originality Progressive thinking and new results originate from the norm of originality (40-42). To achieve progression, originality asks for individual creativity in the form of posing new questions and coming up with new solutions. This translates to: every article and book submitted to the archive has to present something new. The referees performing peer review are trained to ensure this authenticity, with the strongest breach of originality (plagiarism), having grave consequences. Cel- ebration of originality comes in the form of careers, prizes, places in committees, etcetera. Originality comes with a side-effect hampering progression. Due to the need to be original in our time where scientists are many, originality causes the actors in science to specialise to hyperfine degree; scientists cannot read all new literature in a broad field, but their writings are confronted with strict selection on novelty. The fear of accidental reproduction causes scientist to narrow their focus to stay ‘original’. This means for many scientists to focus on ‘relatively conventional problems in a limited domain - i.e. to Kuhnian ‘normal science’ within an established ‘paradigm” (41).

2.2.5 Scepticism Scepticism (42-44) ensures the quality of the archive and limits the production of new science by refuting scientific knowledge claims on account of originality, technical quality, credibility and significance. This is done systematically through peer review and unsystematically through a number of practices including: public book reviews, questions at seminars and conferences, letters in journals and other forms of private and public debate. Before anything enters the academic archive it is systematically subjected to peer review. Referees act as representatives for the scientific community. Since referees often originate from the same

13 academic niche, the norm of disinterestedness pushes them to be especially careful in pointing out every fallacy. This anonymous practice allows evaluation to be done by the community, contrary to a hierarchical system. Further, it does not only minimise technical errors but acts as a vital intellectual practice by inducing debate on as- sumptions and uncertainties. Although scepticism cannot guaranty everything in the archive is ‘good science’, it does maintain its overall credibility and quality. Traditionally, after something has been allowed into the academic archive there is no way to formally retract it. The only informal system for closing a controversy is by disregard. A thread of thought simply dies out when no one cares to come up with new arguments.

2.3 From academic to post-academic science There are several aspects related to academic and post-academic science that either fall outside the Mertonian scheme or cannot be assigned to a single norm, but are relevant for understanding science culture and/or its recent change.

2.3.1 Specialisation and collectivisation Academic science is split up into many disciplines and sub-disciplines. Although the boundaries of these disciplines are often arbitrarily established at some point in history and although they vary geographically, the disciplines behave as real entities. A discipline acts as a tribe with its own specific culture: it has its own rules, practices and definition of what is ‘good science’. Working for a discipline and showing commitment gives a scientist a foundation in life, both financially and socially. Financially through a position at a department, socially by providing initially a place to learn and later a career: a job in teaching and a public stage to exhibit findings. Below the discipline, faculty and department levels the specialisation continues in the form of problem areas. Although problem areas come to be and dissolve in time, one distinct problem area may busy an academic throughout life. The extreme amount of problem areas that we see today, referred to as hyperfine specialisation, is due to the friction arising when combining the norms of originality and scepticism. Hyperfine specialisation should therefore be regarded as a structural feature of the academic science culture. Like species in ecology, every scientist searches a fruitful niche where they can trade their thoughts and efforts for money and recognition. A perverse side effect enfolds: a scientist may, although important for her own achievements, ignore a (neighbouring) field if she knows she cannot reach the level of knowledge of the equally hyper-specialised scientists in the ‘sub-tribe’ of that field. This detrimental side-effect leads to tunnel vision and social division which is opposed by the scientific ethos in the form of

14 universalism (Ziman’s deﬁnition) and communalism. (46-49)

In academic science, most research is done individually. Indeed, due to the norm of originality scientists are expected to come op with their own questions and answers. For several reasons this individu- ality is challenged at present. The cultural development of scientific practice forces researchers to work intimately together. Scientific problems get, due to their nature, increasingly complex over time and this continues to the point that a single person cannot solve them. In parallel, there is a constant development of tools. As tools get more complex they often require technicians working together with scientists. Further, applied research is interdisciplinary in nature and does not fit the boundaries of a single academic discipline, requiring expertise from various fields. Interdisciplinary or complex problems need teams of researchers and technicians which in turn are managed by costly and populous social teams. The ‘lonely seeker after the truth’ or academic researcher is challenged as she has to work together with a range of people of increasing number. Although this may not be impossible to combine with the academic ethos, Ziman (1996b) fears that this development puts a burden on performing in accordance to the norms of originality, disinterestedness and scepticism that require individualistic minds. (69-71)

2.3.2 Tenure The ethos and the academic culture do not reveal the way scientists make a living. Until approximately the middle of the 19th century hardly anyone earned a living through science. Scientists were either wealthy or enjoyed patronage; they were ‘amateurs in the true sense of the word’. Afterwards, with the advent of academic science culture in the West the source of income shifted from private patronage to public patronage. Scientists are hired as permanent teachers by universities, teaching provides an income such that they can devote their excess time freely to producing new science. An academic position does not have to involve teaching nor be at a university, but it does feature a certain amount of time to be spend according to the will of the scientist. The feudal term tenure stands for guaranteed permanent employment in academic culture. This much sought after position gives protection to enable science that abides to the norms of disinterestedness and originality. The ﬁnancial and social relations between scientists and their employers is only beneﬁcial for research institutions in the sense that they acquire academic acclaim. The bidding for academic brilliance started in the early nineteenth century in Germany by competitive universities and expanded globally, only to speed up due to catalysers such as the Nobel prize. Public patronage had a rapid expansion during and after World

15 War Two, raising new challenges for maintaining autonomy. In an eﬀort to minimise interference from patrons, the community uses academic committees, national academies and research organisations to allocate funds. (49-52)

2.3.3 Academic science in society One of the products of the academic science culture is the ideal image of the academic scientist herself. Ziman describes her as follows: In the heyday of academic science, an established research scientist in a tenured academic appointment could feel remarkably free to behave like the legendary ‘lonely seeker after truth’. This freedom even extends to not playing this role, if inspiration lapses or fades with age. (52) And in a similar fashion the ideal of academic science itself is considered an independent social institution, able to ‘manage its own internal affairs without interference by external human authorities’ (53). Scientists conform to these notions and promote them by noting the difficulty of scientific pursuits, by sustaining the notion that it is best to let scientific problems to a small elite of trained academics. This mindset can be seen as an internalisation of disinterestedness and therefore as inherently connected to the ethos and the institution of science. This mindset renders academic science an elitist culture, i.e. the general public is considered to be unfit to solve or pose the complex problems academic scientists aim to solve. Ideally, the general public is considered to be not involved with science. But clearly even academic science is not completely cut of from society. Academic science connects with society on the levels of education, knowledge and the ‘release’ of scientists outside academia. On the level of education, to clarify scientific findings and principles, academic science is put into the context of society by the members of the community itself. This is done not only to clarify principles for the unlearned but also to prepare students for work in society, a path many students will choose. In other words, the service of teaching that often comes with public patronage forces the scientist to connect with society. On the level of knowledge the connection is through the academic archive. The academic archive consists of all scientific research ‘promptly, fully and freely’ creating an epistemic link with society. Ideas trickle down to the applied sciences, social debates and nowadays R&D departments. R&D departments and their ‘predecessor’ (industrial science) both use many ‘academic techniques’ and produce technoscience that influences academic science, an example showing that this is a two-way process.

16 2.3.4 Growth As shown by de Solla Price (1961), the growth of science both in terms of output and researchers has followed a steep exponential curve since about 1700, since when the number of scientific journals grew by a factor of ten every 50 years. He indicates that this growth cannot continue indefinitely as it far exceeds population growth. In- deed, no government is willing to spend more than a certain amount of its budget on science. Post-academic science might result in part from reaching a certain saturation in the growth of science. A steady state system cannot be ruled by the same principles as an exponentially growing system. Where in the heyday of academic science there was room for any relevant followup question to be asked and researched, after growth regulation some metric has to decide what questions fail to be important enough to be answered. (71-72) The growth is clear in theoretical physics. Today the field of string theory is the daily occupation of many (figure 1), whereas only a few dozen of scientists published on the subject of quantum physics in the critical period of the 1920s. These few dozen included an essential core group of only around ten scientists who frequently visited each other per train across Europe (Kaiser, 2011).

Figure 1: The cumulative number of publications on the topics of “string theory” and the closely related “AdS/CFT” conjecture has been stable for the period 2009- 2019 at around 1000 papers per year, or, around three papers per day. The Web of Science topics used for this analysis are: “string theory” and “AdS/CFT”. [1.2]

2.3.5 Politics de Solla Price (1961) prophesied a new regime where growth would saturate which indeed has materialised in terms of government spending. In the 1970s England implemented steady state funding for science, other countries followed suit. For a state it is natural to set a certain ceiling to research funding due to ethical and practical considerations. A state cannot consist of only researchers nor does any

17 state want to compromise much on food security or healthcare for the sake of academic science. Academic science can, in that sense, be seen as a luxurious commodity. But as science reaches the point of steady state it still takes up a nontrivial amount of government spending. This burden on public funds needs to be justified to the people that provide the funds, which leads to greater involvement of science and technology policy. Greater involvement is often and effectively acquired through the ‘soft money system’ which, instead of direct funding or tenure of persons, allocates money through projects; scientists write proposals that go through peer review to be subjected to a funding body that funds what it regards to be the best science. Using ‘soft money’ a government can, through instructions to funding bodies, put pressure on scientists to deliver on certain research questions. In parallel, in various fields the content of science is changing; after centuries of exploration a general understanding of the field allows researchers to navigate and find specific questions that solve specific problems. This ‘finalisation’ enables a more strategic focus of research on application, which a government can put pressure on through ‘soft money’ to get quicker return on their ‘investment’. (72-76) The long continued growth of science towards a steady state has reached a level of funding in which governments endanger fulfilment of the norms of originality, scepticism and disinterestedness. It is remarkable that the scientific community subjects itself to such levels of dependancy that come with increased government spending as there is no written rule or direct need for a certain level of scientific growth.

2.3.6 Industry In the 19th and much of the 20th century academic science coexisted with industrial science. Industrial ﬁrms carried out research mainly in their own labs. The standards used in those labs were so close to those in academic universities that industrial science resulted in Nobel Prizes. Indeed, the two siblings use the same methods, tools and language, but their goals are opposite. Where academic science strives to be communal, universal, disinterested, original and sceptic, industrial science—due to its commercial goals—is often proprietary, local, authoritarian, commissioned and expert. At least in part due to the utility-focussed policy demands that come with allocation of large sums of money, the two modes of science have started to mingle more and more, a process referred to as ‘industrialisation’. Nowadays large companies (are able to) think of owning research laboratories as costly and outdated. (77-79)

18 2.3.7 Bureaucracy The described developments in policy, growth, industrialisation and specialisation in science are driving the proliferation of research proposals, industrial funding, reports, external monitoring and performance indicators. The move towards collective research, for example, demands more and more complex organisation structures. And, as academic science takes up more government budget, government will turn to more assessment. These prolific mechanisms are often gathered in a single term: bureaucratisation (79-82). The siblings of academic and industrial science do no longer exist individually in the ‘post-industrial’ era, but according to Zi- man (2000, p. 81) post-academic science is not ‘post-industrial science’, where knowledge production is organised as post-industrial multinationals working in small free-standing temporary teams. Al- though post-academic science has to some extent substituted “com- mand’ management’ for “market’ competition’ and teams work in more flexible arrangements and are increasingly dependent on ‘cus- tomer–contractor arrangements’, knowledge producing entities still relay financial responsibility to their managerial superiors and are still predominantly dependent on full-time staff of universities, governmental- or private institutions. According to Ziman (2000), post-academic science culture is, rather than post-modern, modern. Science culture lags behind societal change. Indeed, in spite of being part of and enabling modernity, academic science has many pre-modern aspects: patronage, personal commitment to a communal ethos, apprenticeship and informal en- forcement of unwritten rules. Academic science is highly accepted in society mainly because people believe in science, it depends on trust. In post-modern times, with the bureaucratisation of science, aspects and language originating from modern society become dominant, including: contracts, regulations, training and management. Science culture in its current form is thus exceptionally late in following a trend that entered society centuries ago: modernity, characterised by Max Weber as the advent of a bureaucratic society.5

2.3.8 Evolutionary science Analogies between Darwin’s theory of evolution and the development of science have been around since the 19th century and have been proposed by amongst others Karl Marx, Ernst Mach, William James (277) and Karl Popper (1985). More recently these have been developed in a framework coined ‘Blind Variation and Select-

5Kerr (1963) has echoed the stance that universities socially ‘lag behind’ in deﬁning them as conservative institutions. “The external view is that the university is radical; the internal reality is that it is conservative. The other pictures it as autonomous, a cloister, when the historical fact is that it has always responded, but seldom so quickly as today, to the desires and demands of external groups—sometimes for love, sometimes for gain, increasingly willingly, and, in some cases, too eagerly.” (Kerr, 1963, p. 71)

19 ive Retention’ (Campbell, 1960). Although, writes Ziman (276-288), evolution theory is more than a ‘vague analogy’ and often more capable of capturing knowledge-production dynamics than the concept of revolution, it has several shortcomings. A consequential one being its strong focus on competition and the resulting undervaluation of cooperation—vital in science production (e.g. Tsing, 2015, pp. 141 ff. or Le Guin, 2019). Another point that is relevant here is the difficulty of understanding selection and variation of ‘offspring’ or ‘trials’ in the evolution of theories as being truly ‘blind’ in the Darwinian sense—an especially questionable point in the post-academic science model described below (276-288).

2.4 Post-academic science In defining academic science culture Ziman picks the lower bound for the time frame in which it resembled existing science culture around the year 1850 [2.1]: after 1850 academic science culture enjoyed a relatively stable period until the 1960s or 70s (68) when knowledge production entered a ‘radical, irreversible, world-wide transformation’ (67). Taking the academic science model as a reference a new mode of knowledge production is identified at this point in time: post- academic science. Post-academic science differs from academic science in both regulatory and social principles. This cultural change asks for a renewed inquiry of the epistemic value of its product: scientific knowledge. Unfortunately there seems to be no single or simple reason driving the mentioned transformation; instead, post-academic science arises due to a whole range of factors. In Ziman’s words: ... post-academic science is not, as many scientists still hope, a temporary deviation from the onward march of science as we have always known it. Nor is it just ‘a new mode of knowledge production’: it is a whole new way of life. It is the resultant of innumerable improvised solutions to immediate practical problems. It is the product of expediency, not of design. Yet it constitutes a more or less coherent culture, not because it was planned as such but because science is typically a complex, self-organising social system that adapts opportunistically to changing circumstances. (68) Scientific practices such as experiment, testing and a belief in objective science are referred to as epistemic norms or regulatory principles, they are defined as ‘scientists’ ideas about what should count as ‘the truth’ (56). These regulatory principles can be linked to the social dimension of science, which is for academic science modelled in the ethos of academic science, according to Ziman: ... social ‘universalism’ is related to explanatory unification; ‘disinterestedness’ is normally associated with belief

20 in an objective reality; insistence on ‘originality’ motivates conjectures and discoveries; ‘organised scepticism’ requires that these be fully tested and justiﬁed before being accepted as established knowledge. And so on. (56) This link between the social and epistemological sides of science is used to identify a new post-academic ethos that is emerging with the transformation to post-academic science. A description of the post-academic ethos will form the remainder of this chapter.

2.5 The post-academic ethos There seems to be no single or clear reason for the transition towards post-academic science. A ‘post-academic ethos’ is therefore not as clear-cut as its academic sibling. Ziman even restrains from giving a synoptic account of his model, noting that it is rich in details and structure and thus suffers from reduction (328). The following section, however, does try to give a clear and positive outline of such an ‘ethos’ condensed to twelve characteristics. The titles of the sections of this chapter reflect a shift in science from academic towards what used to be industrial science [2.3.6]. Post-academic science, a hybrid that emerged from academic and industrial science (Ziman, 1996a), is clearly not fully described as a superposition of its predecessors; post-academic science evolved over time and is a new, a distinct mode of knowledge production. Originality is e.g. threatened in post-industrial science but post- academic research is clearly not equal to commissioned research (206- 207). Ziman notes that post-academic science describes a gradual and complex transition in science culture, science is not at once or wholly ‘going post-academic’ (Ziman, 1996a). And naturally, the transition varies significantly per subject area. I have tried to summarise Ziman’s elaborate discussion of post- academic science in a number of characteristics. These are numbered in a peculiar manner (e.g. 2A). The numbers and letters represent another grouping of these characteristics. For now, it can be disreg- arded. It will be explained later on, in chapter four.

2.5.1 From communal to proprietary The difference between formal and informal communication in academic science depends on whether or not something is published in the archive [2.2.1]. In the time of post-academic science the ever increasing volume and geographical reach of communication, especially the advent of the internet, benefit speed in formal and informal communication. Fast and detailed publications are in general beneficial to communalism; a personal cognitive effort becomes, when published on the internet, a possible challenge for the global scientific community. A detailed account of the used data through databases saves vast amounts of time spent on similar measurements.

21 1) With the advent of networks and network technology, informal communication is liberated from the geographical and temporal bounds it used to have, acquiring the range that used to be accessible for formal language only (while being inherently speedier). Proponents and critics, academics and non-academics from anywhere can and do give their views informally. In addition, digital documents that are to be published can be altered much easier than their physical precursors. This forms a threat for the formal communication system involving a clear cycle of: discovery, justification, criticism and revision. Thus, although a digital network may give more plausible, more discussed documents, it endangers, together with the prevalence of formal communication, the norm of communalism (114-116). 2A) The networks in post-academic science link heterogeneous nodes. The post-academic network links academic scientists with ‘nodes’ that do not have to adhere to the academic ethos (e.g. private companies or governments). Academics differ in principle from non- academic researchers in that they do not benefit from secrecy but contrary gather their rewards by publications that get acknowledged by the scientific community. Thus, not adhering to the norm of communalism has direct negative consequences for the academic scientist, rendering these linkages inherently problematic. The academic archive could in principle keep its communal character by dismiss- ing any knowledge that involves secretive nodes, and preserve communalism in this manner. In practice, however, when knowledge- producing groups and increasingly scientists themselves share their work between academic and non-academic institutions, the scientific literature is hard to classify in these terms and the archives get ‘polluted’ by unpublished, secret work. Ziman thinks of this ‘epistemic pollution’ in post-academic science as a direct threat to its predecessor: Secrecy in science is a form of ‘epistemic pollution’ to which post-academic science would seem all too open. It is not only a sign of a major change in the social organisation of science. It also signifies increasing subordination to corporate and political interests that do not put a high value on the production of knowledge for the benefit of society at large. And yet, in the long run, it is precisely the openness of academic science, its respect for the communal norm, and its grounding in reproducible empirical observation, that are the best guarantees of its practical reliability – for good or for ill. (116)

2.5.2 From universal to local Before the clear hegemony of the German universities, around 1850, British universities still encouraged a student to be a generalist able to ‘master any subject’ (Newman, 1947, p. 178). The German universities were the ﬁrst to encourage a specialist science. The

22 department and the institute were only created in 1809 in Berlin with the foundation of the Humboldt-Universität(Kerr, 1963, ch. 1). Although the structure of German universities is the foundation for science as described by Ziman’s academic science culture model, it are the academic norms of originality and universalism and the growth of the scientific endeavour that are the foundation for present- day hyperfine specialisation that is post-academic [2.3.1]. 3A) In more detail, universalism is inhibited by this specialisation socially. Growth in the number of scientists and the size of the academic archive [2.3.4] together with the friction between the norm of originality and universalism [2.3.1] result in post-academic science which has become so ”elaborate and esoteric” (154) that only a group of trained scientists can understand its proceedings. In other words, this leads to local knowledge. 3B) Epistemically, applying methods that are universal, in the sense that they leave little room for subjectivity, results in knowledge deemed increasingly local. These methods are for example mathematics, logic and computer models. The locality comes from the relative decline in the number of people with appropriate specialist training; people who actually understand these methods. Comparably, the formal languages of scientists become increasingly specialised and incom- prehensible for outsiders, and thus local [2.2.2]. 3C) In post-academic science epistemic unification is challenged by pragmatic finalisation, this characteristic of post-academic science is also connected to the norm of originality and will be covered in a later section [2.5.4].

2.5.3 From disinterested to authoritarian Disinterestedness is an academic norm that is severely affected in post-academic science. 2B) Present-day post-academic science is organised on quasi-market relationships (Ziman and the Science Policy Support Group, 1991). Science is done by semi-autonomous research entities that are supported by various funding bodies, private and public. Although these post-academic institutions often have a code for originality and disinterestedness, they operate for a public wealth objective (172-174). 4C) In parallel, projects (a characteristic epistemic tool of post- academic science, see: 2.5.4 & 2.3.5) are tagged - however remote - with potential use which connects them to related private and public institutions with similar goals, which gives these institutions a certain amount of influence (173). With these two arguments we can conclude that disinterestedness no longer operates in post-academic science; although many academic practices are still being used and preserved, disinterestedness is not, since the final authority is socio-economic power (174).

23 2.5.4 From original to commissioned Tenure permitted scientists such as Newton, Einstein and Darwin to formulate a question and only publish it after individually formulating a compelling answer. 4A) In the post-academic world this extremely individual practice is generally impossible. Instruments, facilities and broad expertise require (financial) support and teamwork in research. In many countries a solution to this new setting is the introduction of projects and their proposals. 4B) A project proposal states a problem formally and explores the path to answering it. Proposals are generally submitted by ‘hybrid fora’, comprised of academic and non-academic practitioners to varying degree. Proposals discourage risk-taking since peer review favours problems that are considered realistic within the community (221-222). Also, projects facilitate opportunism as proposals for which technical skill, instruments and facilities are available are considered relatively important and feasible (186). 3E)The observed collectivisation [2.3.1] of problem choice renders many scientists skilled technicians; a highly trained scientist focuses on perfection of her technical skills rather than investing in her intellectual originality. 4B) This ‘professionalisation’ of the initial step of research provides in principle more systematic research of higher qualitys but reduces intellectual originality and unexpected results from daring projects. Post-academic science has limited respect for strategic autonomy: the freedom for individuals to draw their long-term research plans. Although this often ensures research of higher quality, in diminishes the variation of research projects.6 In an evolutionary perspective on science [2.3.8] variation in new research can be seen as the genetic variation in offspring. Limiting genetic variation in biology has long- term effects. Diversity in offspring is important for adaptation to a changing environment; altering the amount of diversity has implications for overall future fitness (205).7 3C) Post-academic science is typically working on a local scale [2.5.2 & 2.3.4 - 2.3.5], but the sum of all these local efforts does not form a global knowledge map. Since every local field needs and uses its own specialised language, an overall map will be of little use. Post- academic science seems to favour ‘pragmatic finalisation’ over ‘explanatory unification’ (209). Consequently, ‘post-academic science

6Feyerabend (1975, p. 188) formulates this more explicitly: ‘As opposed to its immediate predecessor, late 20th-century science has given up all philosophical pretensions and has become a powerful business that shapes the mentality of its practitioners. Good payment, good standing with the boss and the colleagues in their ‘unit’ are the chief aims of these human ants who excel in the solution of tiny problems but who cannot make sense of anything transcending their domain of competence. Humanitarian considerations are at a minimum and so is any form of progressiveness that goes beyond local improvements.’ 7In nature, variability is a precise balance. Trees, enjoying a very high life expectancy compared to humans, generally have a much higher variability in their DNA. This is a mechanism to cope with larger changes in the environment due to longer time spans (e.g. Wohlleben, 2015, ch. 30).

24 is post-modern in its pluralism’ (210); it is at ease with contrasting definitions of knowledge. This description seems to spell friction with the popular notions of inter- and transdisciplinary research. But according to Ziman the present-day tendency to hail interdisciplinary research is mostly facade or PR. To its contrary, post-academic research becomes more ‘specialised, diversified and fragmented’ (210). The issues of post- academic science may not fit to the old disciplinal structure, but this does not mean that it is trying to connect the old disciplines. Consequently post-academic science done outside paradigms connected to the established disciplines may still have lots in common with Kuhnian normal science. 3D) This ‘polluted’ mix related to the interpenetration of what used to be academic and industrial science, leads increasingly to insecurity on the general epistemological value of science. It is when researchers share data, practices, theories and ideas with several distinct research communities that epistemology gets blurred such that post-academic science misses clarity on what the general base of accepted knowledge is. 5A) Socially, the boundaries between an academic and an industrial career also fade. This can be seen from the drop in tenured positions, privatisation of research establishments and the rise of the fixed-term contract (72 & Ylijoki, 2010). And from the industrial side, the abolition of the industrial laboratory (77).

2.5.5 From sceptical to expert Academic science is, in the evolutionary perspective, a process of natural selection (of trial and error) that is little influenced by external factors in its production of trials [2.3.8].8 This is possible because institutionalised scepticism only works in the stage of finding errors through peer review. 4D) In post-academic science, the natural selection process that is benefited by variation over time is hampered; scientists and their research are already being steered through peer review in the trial stage by using a system that funds individual projects [2.3.5]. 5B) In part due to the pluralism of post-academic science, the quality of the individual scientist is assessed not only by peer review but also by interdisciplinary metrics such as her citation index (260).

8Trials or novel ideas get ‘breathing space’ through tenure (Ziman, 1996b, p. 80). Feyerabend (1975, ch. 3) takes a strong stance by claiming that the exclusion of any idea, however irrational, before providing ‘breathing space’ is contra-productive.

25 3 String theory and its prehistory

It goes beyond the purpose of this thesis to recite the whole history of string theory, mathematically nor historically. A brief account of the technical development of string theory is given in appendix A.9 The first half of this chapter describes the development of quantum field theory, the main basis on which string theory research rests. In general, the technical has been shunned throughout this chapter to make the text accessible to readers of all disciplines, but, alas, at instances some technical knowledge is unavoidable. Readers with no or little background in string physics can find a general direction appendix A, readers with a physics background may use it to refresh and supplement their memories.

3.1 Antecedent: quantum theory String theory was born out of quantum theory, specifically quantum field theory.10 Key issues in quantum mechanics were uncovered and discussed in the 1920s, leading to vehement debates on its interpreta- tions. Quantum field theory developed mainly thereafter, during and after the second world war in America. Taken together, this period in which quantum physics came to be, stretching roughly from 1910 until the end of the cold war, coincided with a number of social events that seem to have had a remarkable influence on science and physics specifically. These social events are remarkably similar to those situated at the roots of post-academic culture (see section 2.3). The recent history of quantum physics and quantum field theory may elucidate an extensive number of issues. To what degree is the current dominance of the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ a product of social change in the West? To what degree is its sequel: string theory? And, perhaps, do we exist somewhere in a string landscape? Literature on the genesis of quantum theory and quantum field theory is abundant and includes philosophical and sociological perspectives. Within the more recent string theory a lot has yet to be written.11 This chapter provides a philosophical and sociological perspective on the century of history of physics that led to string theory. This is

9More complete accounts of the technical history can be found in e.g. Rickles (2014) and Cappelli et al. (2008). 10Specifically: string theory was born out of quantum field theory with the discovery of the Veneziano amplitude in 1968, a function that is suited to describe a certain kind of meson scattering; it took until 1970 for physicists to the discover that the amplitude was describing a string like object (Veneziano, 2008). 11Rickles (2014) writes that the dust has to settle before we can write a history of the last two decades of string physics. I argue that much more dust has to settle before we can completely understand string physics beyond its mathematical and physical description, to understand the culture and its aims. After Feynman, Schwinger and Dyson introduced renormalisation, it took 36 years to let the dust settle for Schweber (1986) to write his influential piece. First philosophical texts are being written, see e.g. Dardashti et al. (2019) and Galison (2017).

26 done keeping in mind, amongst other things, the Sokal aﬀair, which has shown that relating sociological, epistemological and ontic issues—staging an encounter between science and technology studies and high energy physics—should be done with care (see: Sokal, 1996). Combining the two cultures of science studies and natural science and their bodies of knowledge is however not impossible. The combining ambition often leads to heated arguments that do not address substance but mistaken language (Mermin, 2001, esp. pp. 97-98). Perhaps because there is much to learn, conciliative gestures have been made from both the side of the natural and the social sciences (e.g. Labinger and Collins, 2001; Saulson, 2008; Dardashti et al., 2019). Indeed, the desire to venture out from the natural into the social has long played a part in exploring the deeper implications of quantum mechanics (Beller, 1998; Kaiser, 2011).12

3.1.1 War, migration and the American style A century after the onset of specialised science [2.5.2], the young physics faculties were quickly transformed in size, geographical loc- ation and in their social structure. A shift that began in the 1920s and accelerated in war times. Oppenheimer (1948) reflects on the significant portion of this transition related to the second world war: As it did on everything else, the last war had a great and at least a temporarily disastrous effect on the prosecution of pure science. The demands of military technology in this country and in Britain, the equally over-riding demands of the Resistance in much of Europe, distracted the physicists from their normal occupations as they distracted most other men. We in this country, who take our wars rather spastically, perhaps witnessed a more total cessation of true professional activity in the field of physics, even in its training, than any other people. (Oppenheimer, 1948, p. 65) Julius Robert Oppenheimer’s reflection reveals the quantitative growth of doctorate positions in physics in the United States and England, driven by policy and funded through philanthropy.13 This growth in numbers coincided with a geographical movement of the centre of theoretical physics from European, predominantly German universities towards American universities. A remarkable shift, since American science culture in the 19th century was in many ways different form

12In Beller (1998, p. 30): ‘Astonishing statements, hardly distinguishable from those satirised by Sokal, abound in the writings of Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Born and Jordan. ... [Bohr] expected complementarity to be a substitute for the lost religion.’ 13‘Men of science, traditionally peaceful, internationally minded, and non-political have become a major war asset. It is important that they be used in the greatest advantage.’ Writes Henry Smyth (1951, p. 38), a policymaker as member of the National Defence Research Committee, in a commentary titled: ‘The Stockpiling and Rationing of Scientiﬁc Manpower’.

27 its counterpart in European schools. This section gives a more detailed overview of the historical, social forces involved in the creation of quantum theory. I conclude that social forces did have a significant influence on the method and philosophy of physics, not only throughout the great wars but also during the cold war. Influences that did not go unnoticed by Einstein, who wrote his concerns in 1938 to his friend Maurice Solovine. In Mach’s time a dogmatic materialistic point of view exerted a harmful influence over everything; in the same way today, the subjective and positivistic point of view ex- erts too strong an influence. The necessity of conceiving of nature as an objective reality is said to be superannu- ated prejudice while the quanta theoreticians are vaunted. Men are even more susceptible to suggestion than horses, and each period is dominated by a mood, with the result that most men fail to see the tyrant who rules over them. (Einstein, letter to Solovine, April 10, 1938. In: Einstein, 1987)

Pragmatism in the United States In most fields, the universities in the United States in the nineteenth century did not achieve the level in basic research on which European institutes operated. However, they excelled in applied research. For ‘basic research’ European institutes enjoyed funding from aristocratic patrons; American institutes where dependent on businessmen who, aiming for quick profit, did not see the advantages of basic research (Coben, 1971, p. 433). This is vivid in the account of a journey to the US in 1831 by the French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville.14 De Tocqueville (1862) traveled to find a country in which—to vast extent—application was preferred to basic research. This is a consequence, he claims, of the reigning democratic order. Due to the fixed social position of the nobility of Europe they have time to ‘med- itate’; the nobility finds high esteem for tranquility which is crucial for ‘the more elevated departments of science’. In the America of 1831, where the classes are not fixed socially but economically, there is a constant ‘disturbance’ originating from the wish of every Amer- ican to move up the ladder of society. De Tocqueville writes: ‘As they are always dissatisfied with the position which they occupy, and are always free to leave it, they think of nothing but the means of changing their fortune, or of increasing it.’ (De Tocqueville, 1862, p. 52).

14In his reporting on the ﬁrst state that started as a democratic state, ﬁfty years after independence, De Tocqueville (1862) gives his philosophical view on the condition the United States resides in. The tenth chapter of the second volume of this work: ‘Why The Americans Are More Addicted To Practical Than To Theoretical Science’ is particularly relevant for this discussion. Equally so the discussion of his work by Schweber (1986).

28 In the second half of the nineteenth century, US basic research was still frail—it had not substantially altered from the state in which Tocqueville found it in 1831.15 A change occurred around 1880, when efforts in US theoretical physics accelerated. Although philanthropists were still providing most funds at the time, they began to lessen the influence of their personal views by conveying authority over scientific spending to the professional staff in their trust funds and to external scientific committees (e.g the National Research Council). This change coincided with a similar shift in the executive power of large businesses. Both the trust fund staff and research committees consisted of scientists who had efficiently achieved progressive change in education. 16 Whilst many universities kept their focus on experimental physics, some universities (including: Princeton, MIT and Chicago) started to provide advanced theoretical courses. In 1920 many students in these institutes were able to understand the most difficult articles on quantum theory.17 The first World War accelerated endowment to basic research as the war demonstrated that basic science had borne fruits for military strength such as gas warfare and radar technology. These developments led to an intimate transatlantic exchange of knowledge through money and people. American philanthropy began to send promising scholars abroad and soon started to fund European theoretical institutes. For example,

15See e.g. Rowland (1883). Although American universities had adapted to the Ger- man university model (Schweber, 1986), in 1900 and 1910 the number of mathematical or theoretical physicists in the US only made up respectively three and two per cent of the global number (Forman et al., 1975, p. 31). 16In 1919 the Rockefeller foundation entrusted the NRC half a million dollars (∼7.3 million 2019 dollars) which was used to open up more than one hundred doctorate positions of which seventeen where solemnly devoted to quantum physics (Coben, 1971, pp. 447-48). Karl (1968, p. 1006) writes: ‘Where private education was concerned, from the 1870s on the combination of reform ambition and personal self-memorialisation led industrial leaders to confer large private resources on new collegiate enterprises’. On their drive to reform science, Karl continues: ‘Both the public and private interests were guided by a newly emerging group of energetic academic entrepreneurs whose European educations spurred a sense of the need for revolutionary educational reform and whose persuasive skills gave state legislatures and philanthropists alike the assurance that ambitious efforts at modernisation would be efficient and dignified’. Karl (1968) focusses on the social sciences but his analysis of professionalisation in the social sciences resembles what happened in the physical sciences (Coben, 1971). 17J. Robert Oppenheimer qualitatively underlines the notion that the centre of theoretical physics lay in Germany and continental Europe at least until deep in the 1920s; Coben (1971, pp. 454-55) cites an interview of Oppenheimer by Thomas Kuhn: ‘At Leiden, he [Oppenheimer] recalled, ‘I decided to learn the trade of being a theoretical physicist. By that time I was fully aware that it was an unusual time, that great things were afoot.’ Asked whether a similar state of excitement had existed at Harvard, Oppenheimer replied, ‘This implies what for Harvard in ’24 and ’25 was not true; namely an awareness of the theoretical picture on a grand scale. At Göttingenthe contrast with Harvard was even more striking: ‘In the sense that had not been true in Cambridge and certainly not at Harvard, I was part of a little group of people who had some common interests and tastes and many common interests in physics. Gradually they gave me some sense and perhaps more gradually, some taste in physics’ ’

29 the General Education Board (receiving large donations from the Rockefeller fortune) started to invest directly in European universities; Copenhagen, Göttingen,Paris and Leiden were directly funded to create extra space for American scholars. The exchange was at that time predominantly one-way. Later, however, starting in 1921, a growing group of European scholars emigrated to the US where they were offered academic positions far superior to those available in the European hierarchical system.18 In parallel, prominent researchers such as Einstein, Ehrenfest and Born were invited and visited the USA taking part in teaching and research (Coben, 1971). These were the first contractions of a shift towards American dominance in theoretical physics in the era 1930-1950, the era in which quantum field theory was developed. In an inquiry of the influence of Weimar culture on quantum theory, Paul Forman (1971) asserts that ‘also theoretical physics is subject to pervasive and consequential vogues of style and substance’.19 If Forman is right to some extent, it becomes natural to suspect an influence on theoretical physics from the American culture in which the originally Europe-centred science got embedded. Inspecting the American science culture brings us initially to the last decade of the 19th century and the positivist philosophy of Ernst Mach.20 The American application-oriented, empirical culture De Toc- queville (1862) described was fertile soil for positivist philosophy. Due to this fertility Mach had high expectations for the success of his theory in the US and actively promoted his ideas across the Atlantic. He referred to America as ‘the land of my deepest longing’, wrote that he ‘lay[s] particular value’ on writing for the American public and that he was confident that America is the place where his views ‘will be most developed’. Indeed, the English translation for the American public of his influential work Mechanik sold better than the original version (Holton, 1992, pp. 29, 31). Mach’s confidence was further proven valid as the American philosophy of pragmatism, closely re-

18E.g. Eugene P. Wigner and John von Neumann were lured to Princeton Univer- sity with high positions that were financed from a General Education Board endowment (Coben, 1976). 19From Schweber (1986, p. 59), relating to the words of Paul Forman (1971, p. 3): ‘The result is, on the one hand, overwhelming evidence that in the years after the end of the First World War but before the development of an a-causal quantum mechanics, under the influence of “currents of thought”, large numbers of German physicists, for reasons only incidentally related to developments in their own discipline, distanced them selves from, or explicitly repudiated, causality in physics.’. 20Mach’s philosophy is empiricist and positivist. He sees it the task of the physicist to order her many sensations in theories efficiently. Theories, however, describe no deeper reality beyond sensations. Mach on efficiency: ‘Physics is experience, arranged in economical order. By this order not only is a broad and comprehensive view of what we have rendered possible, but also the defects and the needful alterations are made manifest, exactly as in a well-kept household.’ And on reality: ‘In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being either intentionally or from necessity omitted.’ (both from: Mach, 1882, p. 64).

30 lated to Machian positivism, became influential around 190021 – at the time US theoretical physics started to develop. A key figure spreading pragmatism among American physicists is Percy W. Bridgman. Bridgman was among the elite group of experimental physicists in the 1920s. He became professor at Harvard in 1919, and was directly or indirectly involved in educating many of the leading theorists in the US of the 1930s.22 His philosophy of operationalism is close to the pragmatism of its founders.23 In The Logic of Modern Physics Bridgman writes: The attitude of the physicist must therefore be one of pure empiricism. He recognises no a priori principles which de- termine or limit the possibilities of new experience. Exper- ience is determined only by experience. This practically means that we must give up the demand that all nature be embraced in any formula, either simple or complicated. It may perhaps turn out eventually that as a matter of fact nature can be embraced in a formula, but we must so organise our thinking as not to demand it as a necessity. (Bridgman, 1927, p. 3)24 In the introduction of the same book he notes: ‘The material of this essay is largely obtained by observation of the actual currents of opinion in physics; much of what I have to say is more or less common property and doubtless every reader will find passages that he will feel have been taken out of his own mouth.’ (p. x).

The Second World War The increasingly hostile environment in Europe eventually brought, between 1933 and 1941, approximately 100 prominent physics researchers to the United States (Weiner, 1968, p. 190-191). These

21‘By that date (1898) the times seemed ripe for its reception. The word ’pragmatism’ spread, and at present it fairly spots the pages of the philosophic journals. On all hands we find the ’pragmatic movement’ spoken of, sometimes with respect, sometimes with contumely, seldom with clear understanding. It is evident that the term applies itself conveniently to a number of tendencies that hitherto have lacked a collective name, and that it has ‘come to stay.’ ’ writes James (1907, p. 30). He also notes that he first came into contact with the still unknown pragmatism in an article by Pierce from 1878. 22Compare Schweber, 1986, pp. 61-63 and the table on p. 77. 23These were Peirce, James and the other members of the metaphysical club. For pragmatism see e.g. James (1907) or Peirce (1905) who writes: ‘...if one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. For this doctrine he [the empiricist] invented the name pragmatism’ (p. 162). 24Compare to C.S. Peirce’s ontology, as conveyed by James (1907, p. 29): ‘To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we [scientists] need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve—what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is then for us [scientists] the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive significance at all.’

31 100 comprised both experimental and theoretical physicists but due to the absence of a barrier, common in Europe, and the advanced technological knowledge of the American colleagues, the immigrants worked both on experimental and theoretical problems. The hostil- ity in their home country resulted in the temporary ‘Dissolution of German physics’, in which Jews were expelled from public positions and science was reduced to the ‘jobbing for war industries’.25 Ger- man scientists had great personal diﬃculties and were often relieved by the open and sociable American (scientiﬁc) culture. Victor Weis- skopf stated this sentiment: ‘Within the shortest time one was in the midst of a society that was extremely appealing and interesting and active; and in fact we felt much more as refugees in Europe than here...’. The alternative was indeed unattractive, this is clear from an interview with Hans Bethe: ‘Many of my colleagues and professors were terrible chauvinists, and talked of nothing else but restoring the glory of Germany...so I found life in Germany in the 1920s unsatis- factory in every respect except work. I found that I could not talk politics to anybody, and that coloured my outlook generally...People were grumbling all of the time.’ (Weiner, 1968, p. 222; 203). These refugee scientists initially brought their European academic culture but, more than establishing their culture in America, they ‘resonated’ with the prevailing American culture.26 Important factors herein are the nearly 1300 American-trained physicists that entered US physics research coincidently (Weiner, 1968, p. 203), a selection procedure that favoured Americans and those who were inclined to Anglo-American research culture (e.g. Schweber, 1986, p. 80), and soon the adaption of European physicists to an American lifestyle, to American culture outside faculty doors.27

The Cold War The global share of American-trained scientists only increased after the war.28 The unprecedented growth due to the strong ties between

25From an open letter that was printed in the The New Republic written by fourteen distinguished European scientists, including Ernest Rutherford and Paul Langevin, see: Weiner (1968, p. 209); ‘The Dissolution of German physics’ is the name of a chapter in Weiner’s (1968) study which also includes ‘jobbing ...’. 26Physicist John Van Vleck (1964, p. 25) claims American physics reached ‘critical size’ before most eminence came over from Europe. Schweber (1986, p. 58) writes: ‘The refugee scientists resonated with and reinforced American strength and methods: they did not create them.’. 27Adaption is e.g. noted in 1934/1935 by Wolfgang Pauli in the manners of Eu- gene Wigner: ‘Pauli noticed that Wigner was ‘considerably more physical, meaning less formal than before,’ and that he was ‘very useful in shoptalk.” (Schweber, 1986, p. 82). Schweber includes many more aspects and examples of the dominance of pragmatism in American physics in his analysis. E.g. the dominant position of Oppenheimer, who studied under Percy Bridgman (pp. 84–91) 28So did the funds. Forman (1987, p. 194) writes: ‘Through the 1950s, the only signiﬁcant sources of funds for academic physical research in the U.S. were the Department of Defence and an Atomic Energy Commission whose mission was de facto predominantly

32 national security and physics and the related technical focus in physics observed from the end of the Second World War onwards are analysed in detail by Kaiser (2002). He notes that the strong increase in the number of PhD positions is influenced by the cold war (see figure 2). From 1945 until 1950 the number of physics PhDs grew twice as fast as the average over all fields; it grew faster than all other fields. The quick rise contrasts sharply with the growth before the war; in the period 1930-1939 the rate of increase was more than an order of magnitude lower and physics PhDs were ‘produced’ Kaiser (2002) at an average rate compared to other disciplines.29 At the end of the 1940s faculties reported a desperate lack of space, possibly leading to the abrupt flattening of the curve in figure 2. Only in the early 1960s, after Sputnik, the number of PhDs granted rose again. This growth was not due to faculties growing even larger, instead the number of institutions granting PhDs doubled between 1959 and 1967 (Kevles, 1995, p. 388). Kaiser (2002, 2011) convincingly shows that under these rapid expansions lay a foundation of national security policy; prominent physicists and policymakers went as far as proposing a ‘Scientific and Technological Service’ that would be comprised of physicists who ‘would appear at once in a pool subject to disposition in the national interest’ (2002, p. 144) and they calculated the number of accelerators needed to busy the ‘stockpile’ of scientists in peaceful times. The Federal Security Agency’s Office of Education and the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted: ‘National policy must be concerned not only with keeping the young men already in the field at work but also with insuring a continuing supply of new graduates.’ (2002, p.145). Apart from material efforts to busy American physicists the war funds also completed a long process of qualitative change in physics; a qualitative change related to pragmatism, but in many ways a separate, sociological phenomenon. The high fraction of defence spending in physics research aimed at the production of new military technology—and the coinciding amount of bargaining power available to military institutions—induced a qualitative selection procedure in both research objectives and personnel. These effects are a re-enactment of Forman’s (1971) thesis—referred to above—and much commented upon by Kaiser (2002, 2011) and also by Forman (1987) himself. Selection of research objectives and personnel in a hierarchical manner, based on what ‘the American’ thought necessary, was already busied by the National Research Council (Coben, 1971). It was later sustained when European physicists were hired, taking account of their inclination towards Anglo-American, pragmatic research culture (Schweber, 1986). Afterwards, selection of research topics was part and parcel of WOII physics (Oppenheimer, military.’. 29Average increase in physics PhD’s between 1930-39 and 1945-51 respectively: 4.6% and 53.1%, see p. 10 of Harmon and Soldz (1963); for more debate on these numbers see: Kaiser (2002), pp.135-36.

33 Figure 2: Number of Ph.D. positions granted in the United States. From: Har- mon and Soldz (1963, p. 10) (1920-62) and National Research Council (1981, p. 79) (1963-79). A similar graph can be found in Kaiser (2002, ﬁg. 1.6).

1948). After WOII, during the cold war, selection in research objectives did not stop: ‘Harnessing of whole national scientiﬁc establishments to military applications [in World War II] pulled all scientists, whether they tagged themselves as basic or applied, into the same network...Nothing in the postwar world...has lessened this interwoven pattern.’ writes H. Dupree ?. Indeed, Forman (1987) suggests that during the decade after WOII physicists were still in the middle of a process of losing their authority, their ‘control’ over what was a worthy research question to the institutions of American society.30 Through a social lens Kaiser (2011) observes this pattern in the enactment of a doctrine that can be condensed to the sentence ﬁrst conceived by David Mermin (2004): ‘shut up and calculate’. In teaching and research, with little exception, a strong focus on mathematical over philosophical questions emerged. The ‘stockpile’ of physicists that was ‘produced’ during the cold war was trained in a technical manner, such that technical skill would be available in the case of escalation of the tension between the United States of Amer- ica and Russia. Kaiser’s (2011) thesis is supported by the recovered interest for foundations of physics after the cold war, when military spending dried up.

In conclusion, the sturdy eﬀort in training of American physicists enabled through the lavish war-related funds had at least two implications. First, in Kaiser’s (2002) words: ‘The new demands for training ever-rising numbers of students helped to solidify American physicists’ style of work after the war.’.31 The American style of

30The eﬀorts of physicists were hardly directed at building bombs now, rather they were enabling a surge in understanding in electronics (Forman, 1987). 31Kaiser (2002, p. 133) quotes a letter written by Raymond Birge in 1953 concerning

34 work was pragmatic as celebrated by Bridgman (1927) and Peirce (1905). The pragmatic style led Feynman, Schwinger and Dyson to renormalisation in Quantum Field Theory, they removed the mental barrier of looking for ‘revolutionary departures’ (Schweber, 1986, p. 97)—revolutionary departures characterised the synthesis quantum theory and relativity. Instead, Quantum Field Theory is a ‘pragmatic and conservative’ theory that ‘... began with the received formulation of quantum mechanics and special relativity and elaborated the consequences of their synthesis.’ (Schweber, 1986, pp. 97-98). Second, due to the switch from small classrooms that enabled master and apprentice-like relations, the exponentially growing classrooms in 1950 often held over 100 students which changed the style of teaching: ‘Feynman diagrams and similar ‘paper tools’ ﬂourished within this context, while other aspects of theoretical work appeared irrel- evant or unsupportable.’(Kaiser, 2002, p. 156). George Uhlenbeck mentioned that, with large classrooms, the ‘easy to teach’, ‘technical mathematical aspects’ of physics are often mistaken for what is essential.32 Birge mentioned the classroom sizes in his department at Berkeley were ‘a disgrace and should not be tolerated at any respectable university’.33

3.1.2 European foundations: ontology and epistemology of Einstein and Bohr The advent of pragmatism followed a time in which European physics and related ontologies ﬂourished. In this short section the ontologies of Bohr and Einstein are touched upon to support the claim that the advent of pragmatism is a sea-change in physics.34 Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein had a long debate concerning the interpretation of quantum physics that stretched multiple decades. Both members of the ´elitecore set 35 and founders of quantum theory disagreed on its validity (e.g. Kaiser, 1994; Lehner, 2014). What is most evident from their discussion and its voluminous analysis is the complexity of their views.

Einstein, initially inclined to Mach’s positivism and disliking Kant’s philosophy, became a ‘realist’ when working on general relativity (Fine, 1996, p. 86). Realist has quotation marks because the actual a young promising physicist that was dismissed two years earlier because his topic was too abstract, not useful in the central task of training of PhDs. Hiring only those scientists who worked on pragmatic subjects had strengthened pragmatism or ‘the American style’ before: in providing jobs for European refugees, see Schweber (1986, p. 80). 32Noted by Kaiser (2011), from Uhlenbeck (1963, p. 866). 33Written in a letter by Raymond T. Birge to E. W. Strong, August 30, 1950. See note 37 in chapter one of Kaiser (2011). 34A thorough discussion of this much debated topic is found in Lehner (2014); Kaiser (1994) provides a unique and appealing view. 35Kaiser (1994) lends this ﬁtting sociological label from Rudwick (1985, pp. 218-28), who in turn lends it from Collins (1981).

35 meaning of realism for Einstein is a debated issue. Lehner (2014) explains Einstein’s view as follows. Einstein does not need to assume that the objective description is a priori in a Kantian sense, that is, free of empirical knowledge, or that the phenomenal description is theory free in the sense of a radical positivism, that is, limited to pure sense data. Of course, Einstein’s distinction [between phenomenal, positivist reality and the quasi- Kantian reality of the space-time continuum] is merely analytic and does not impose any restriction on physical theories. But it motivates a substantive principle, namely the methodological requirement: only objective facts (given by the invariants of the description) can enter into the fundamental laws of physics.36 (Lehner, 2014, pp. 314-15) Einstein (1918) made it clear why he believes in this realism; for him ‘the search for the absolute behind the varying phenomena [is] the most fundamental motivation for doing physics’ (as paraphrased by Lehner, 2014, p. 315). Einstein believed that science, like art, enables us to escape ‘crude and dreary’ everyday life into the high realms of thought (Kaiser, 1994, p. 138). It is this realism that he promoted until his death in 1955; Einstein (1987, p. 123) wrote in a 1951 letter to Maurice Solovine: ‘I have found no better expression than ‘religious’ for conﬁdence in the rational nature of reality insofar as it is accessible to human reason. Wherever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism. For all I care, the parsons can make capital of it. Anyway, nothing can be done about it.’ When it comes to ontology Bohr was also a realist, albeit in a more Kantian sense.37 Like Einstein, Bohr did not believe in Kantian a priorism but he did believe in the existence of a real world that is—contrary to Einstein—inaccessible. This disposition is clear from the following statement by Bohr on quantum mechanics: ‘...a closed atomic system is not accessible to observation and constitutes therefore in a certain sense an abstraction, just as the idea of an isolated particle’ (see: Kaiser, 1992, p. 227). The diﬀerence between Bohr

36Lehner’s (2014) view on Einstein is, amongst other things, based on a letter to Moritz Schlick reacting to Schlick’s philosophical analysis of relativity. In the letter Einstein asserts that two distinct types of ‘real’ should be separated; real is the data we acquire via our sensory (the Machian real), but equally the derived structure of events in the space-time continuum is real in an other sense (see: Lehner, 2014, p. 311). NB, Schlick was a notable figure in the Wiener Kreis and later the chairman of the Verein Ernst Mach. These are European positivist/empiricist movements strongly influenced by Mach. The approval Einstein has of Schlick’s ontology albeit his disapproval of Mach’s ontology, underlines the importance of nuance in the discussion of individual ontologies. (Holton, 1992) 37For the precise specification of Bohr’s complex realism see e.g. Folse (1994, pp. 123-127)

36 and Einstein lies therefore in the accessibility of the real world beyond sensations. The ontologies of Einstein and Bohr are far more complex than what a short section can hold (Lehner, 2014; Folse, 1994). However, as apparent from Bohr’s and Einstein’s remarks above, the question of ontology does not seem to be the core reason for their long debate. The reason that Bohr and Einstein did have a dispute over the foundations of quantum theory lies also in their diﬀerent stances towards the (social) goals of science. Bohr’s focus lay upon the the communicable and linguistic, his working mode was inclined to collaboration and discussion. For him there was less to acquire in talking about what he thought was the inaccessible, his focus lay with the communication of empirical results. For Einstein, who called himself ‘truly a ‘lone traveler’ ’38, communication was closely linked to the ‘crude and dreary’ everyday life, which he was happy to escape. He thought not in language but in images and strived for uniﬁcation. His focus rendered the ontic question critical (Kaiser, 1994, esp. 140- 41).39

3.2 The aim and ontology of string theory Before Maldecena’s conjecture became the object of general focus in the string theory community (see appendix A), the aim of string theory has been subject to change. Intially, string theory strived to describe and understand the strong force. Its earliest phase coincides with a period in time in which the community of particle physicists was in an exuberant state due to the rencently observed merger of two important, formerly distict theories. This succesful merger of the electro-magnetic and weak interactions into electro-weak theory (in 1968) fueled a belief in the posibilities of unification in physics (Gal- ison, 2017). Throughout the 1980s and after a succesful quantum discription of the strong force was conceived in the late seventies (quantum chromodynamics) it was thought that soon electroweak theory could and would be generalized to include the strong interactions, forming Grand Unified Theory (GUT). The theoretical exaptation40 in string physics (first hinted at in 1971) occurred as its initial, unaccomplished aim of describing the strong force was accomplished by quantum chromodynamics [A]

38Quoted in: Kaiser, 1994, p. 134 39Kaiser (1994) puts emphasis on the personal histories of Einstein and Bohr to understand their ontologies. Taking the term ‘fractal model for history’ from a review by Buchwald (1991). The review covers a hefty biography of Lord Kelvin, in which every aspect of his life is scrutinised to condense the motives of the scientist. Buchwald condenses a fractal model for history which underlines the strong tie between pre-scientific and extra-scientific activity of a scientist and her scientific work. See Kaiser (1994, pp. 130-31). 40Rickles (2014) lends this term from biology, described in the Oxford Dictionary as: ‘the process by which features acquire functions for which they were not originally adapted or selected.’

37 (Rickles, 2014, p. 136). The exaptation shifted the aim of the programme to making a theory of everything (TOE) (a theory more general than a GUT, as it also explains gravity). This very ambitious aim fits a community that strives for, and has reasons to believe in, unification. Indeed, after the missing piece of a theory of the strong force was found, it was time to go back to unifying physics and string theory turned out to be a viable way to get there. This exaptation did not happen overnight. It was proposed in 1974, but still considered too speculative and neglected by almost all physicists. This is in part due to a historic feature: research in dual models had in general very little to do with gravity. The concerned particle physicists were taught early on to forget about gravity as its effects are completely negligible when studying the strong force. With the absence of the need to look for a theory of the strong force, related dual-models died out not long after 1974. String theorists, in this period of low interest in strings, deferred much of their attention to supergravity theories. It was not until the early eighties that a new uptake of string theory began due to a number of papers in 1982. Slow growth made place for fast growth after the superstring revolution of 1984. (Rickles, 2014, pp. 133 ff.) Starting from the first revolution, approximately 1984, until 1995 the unification scheme was going rather well. The candidate TOE did get some critique due to its lack of empirical evidence (e.g. Ginsparg and Glashow, 1986), but the aim of unification and the belief in unification at hand were prevailing. Only after the second revolution the additional problem of the enormous size of the string landscape made it decreasingly likely that string theory would provide a solution which consistatly combines the fundamental forces in the foreseeable future. Instead of giving confidence, the landscape problem splits theorists up into two groups: those who believe in the anthropic principle and those who search for something more fundamental [A]. Due to the recent lack of big developements in string theory, and perhaps due to the recent divide over the landscape problem or the lack of a third string revolution, string theorists from both sides seem to lose confidence in a string theory as a TOE. (Galison, 2017, p. 23) In parallel, starting around the beginning of the new millennium, for some the aim of string theory seems to have changed. Rather than thinking of string theory as a TOE, the community increasingly sees it as a field that brought and brings many insights and new mathematical tools useful for advancing other areas of physics and mathematics (Butterfield, 2019, p. 3).

Reduction and the new aim A very strong advocate for the belief in uniﬁcation that many in the particle physics community held in the period stretching from the 1970s at least until the second string revolution is Steven Weinberg (1994). Weinberg, who co-discovered electro-weak theory, spells out

38 his beliefs in ‘Dreams of a Final Theory’, wherein he writes: ‘... whether or not the discoveries of elementary particle physics are useful to all other scientists, the principles of elementary particle physics are fundamental to all nature.’ The reductionist thesis comes down to a belief that all of nature can eventually be explained by the behaviour of its most fundamental constituents. A belief that all knowledge rests, through a hierarchical, ‘pyramid-like’ structure, on a single fundamental theory. In the case of the particle community this foundation appears as a set of particles and their relations; but earlier examples range from the early greek atomists to followers of Maxwell, who believed the elementary building blocks that build up nature are vortices of ether (Galison, 1983). A hierarchical reduction scheme where all of nature is finally determined by its fundamental constituents implies that a theory of the complete set of ultimate constituents in our universe is a ‘theory of everything’. To clarify and understand this reductionist thesis we dissect it into constitutive reduction and explanatory reduction. In many sciences, reduction is a proven method when starting from a macroscopic object, dissecting it and explaining many of its workings from the dissected parts. This kind of reduction is known as constitutive reduction. Examples are abundant, e.g. understanding election results by looking at the considerations of the individuals that make up the populace or understanding the heart by looking at the cells it’s made of. Turning constitutive reduction around, building all our knowledge of the natural world from its most fundamental constituents, a constructive reductionism, is impossible (Mayr, 1988; Anderson, 1972).41 Some parts of our knowledge of the natural world can be constructed from superimposing the smallest constituents and our knowledge about them. But construction fails with emergent behaviour, to stay within the realm of physics: complex systems, in mathematically well described phase transitions, break symmetries of the simple parts is made up of. An obvious example is superconductivity and superfluid- ity. Because of this reason Anderson (1972), in ‘More is different’, condemns the idea that everything, given the right amount of com- puting power, can be described by a ‘theory of everything’. Quite to the contrary he states:

41As Mayr (1988) notes, even Steven Weinberg—like Niels Bohr—agrees on the theoretical incompleteness of constructive reductionism. But Mayr, unlike Weinberg, concludes that a certain equality thus exists between separate fields of science. Weinberg, on the other hand, rejects completeness of constructive reductionism to explain the entire macroscopic world but does believe in some kind of primacy of knowledge of the micro-world as it is ‘quite deep, perhaps close to the final source’ (Weinberg, 1987, p. 437). He refers to this as ‘a grand story’ of ‘how celestial and terrestrial physics were unified by Newton ... how chemistry and even biology were brought into a unified though incomplete view of nature based on physics ... toward a more fundamental physical theory that the wide- ranging scientific principles we discover have been, and are being, reduced.’ (Weinberg, 2015, p. ??)

39 Thus, with increasing complication at each stage, we go on up the hierarchy of the sciences. We expect to encounter fascinating and, I believe, very fundamental questions at each stage in fitting together less complicated pieces into the more complicated system and understanding the basically new types of behaviour which can result. (Anderson, 1972, p. 396) Claims to a certain ontology aim at deciphering the order of scientific reason. If one believes that explanatory reduction always holds, one believes that a theory of the fundamental constituents is the key capable and necessary to describe the entire world. Equally, other ontologies are adversaries for other fundamental entities. Even the anti-ontology42 of the logical positivists and its modern heritage is a certain ontology which aims at a certain order in scientific reason, namely: the absence of structure beyond measurement; measurement as the most fundamental entity (Galison, 2017). String theory between the revolutions was done mainly by real- ists who believed in some form of constructive reduction. In this paradigm, work on a ‘theory of everything’ or the ‘pyramid of all pyr- amids’ is, of course, very relevant [A] (Galison, 2017, p. 21). Now, a quarter century later, Galison (2017) observes an entirely different ontology starting to replace reductionism in the natural sciences and also in the string community. This change is related to the advent and quick rise of the fields of computational physics and nano engineering (see figure 3). When physicists came in touch with computational models in the 1950s, they considered them a novel, handy tool, but still understood it as being far from the realm of the fundamental, or, specifically: far from a desired solution in the form of a fundamental, proven but falsifiable equation. With time passing and with younger generations of scientists installed—in parallel to the internet becoming a significant part of the world in the West—computational modelling has entered the ‘heartland’ of the physical sciences. For example in understanding the formation of galaxies or in working with fluid dynamics. The field of nanophysics, especially NanoFacture, is unique, as it is both a field of constructing or engineering and a field producing objects of true interest for the physics community. In both fields the scientists are, in their own way, less concerned with ontology than their predecessors, they lean towards engineering. The engineers of nanoscience are not looking at their systems to understand the fundamental rules driving them, rather they look for a system’s robustness and its possibility to scale up in production; they want to improve the capabilities of the objects they produced, rather than understanding their constituents. Computational models and their outcomes used to be no more than an ‘indication’, but in present day science it seems that progressively ‘... simulation [counts]

42Galison (2017) uses the term anti-ontology because the logical positivists, as part of their beliefs in the non-existence of a deeper reality, avoided any talk of ontology.

40 as a way of reaching a goal’ (Galison, 2017, pp. 20, 25). Similar to these fields, according to Galison, string theory is adhering to ‘an engineering way of doing physics’, an ontology increasingly less concerned with (explanatory) reduction but rather interested in using the fruits of string physics as a toolbox for development in other scientific fields.43

3.3 The method of string theory String theory stands in a troublesome relation with empirical data because empirical verification seems to be out of sight, which pro- vokes debate on the method of string theory.44 The discussion on the method of string theory is related to views on the broad and complex topics of underdetermination and specifically realism (Srid- har, 2017). Notwithstanding its philosophical nature, this debate is untill now predominantly discussed by scientists trained in high energy physics. E.g. Sridhar (2017) notices that physicists are not well-informed about recent philosophy and sociology, and philosophers of science vice-versa.45 A significant part of the high-energy community even disregards efforts in epistemology by non-physicists, adds Pigliucci (2019). Whilst disregarding philosophy of science, he continues, physicists’ knowledge of epistemology is often limited to a fragmented view of the work of Popper, especially relating to his demarcation criterium. High-energy physicists do not seem to be remarkably knowledgeble about the later work by, for example, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, or about the significant work on underdetermination by, amongst others, Bas van Fraasen and James

43In a book review Butterﬁeld (2019, p. 3) echoes that the prevailing motivation for doing string theory is the strength of its ‘technical features’ rather than its mathematical ‘beauty’. I.e. at least some string theorists see technical application as the primary aim of the string theory programme. 44I discuss the method of string theory because in the method post-academic practice should be most evident. As Ziman (2000, p. 67) indicates: ’the general argument of this book is that the epistemology of science is linked to its sociology primarily at the level of research practice.’ 45Max Jammer (1966, p. 174) mentions a distance to philosophy tradition for physicists: ‘Physicists traditionally refrain from declaring themselves as subscribing to a particular school of philosophical thought, even if they are conscious of belonging to it.’

41 Figure 3: The temporal growth of the fields of nanotechnology and computational physics, compared to the number of papers on string theory and the AdS/CFT conjecture. These figures are copies of figure 1—showing the growth of papers on the topics of “string theory” and “AdS/CFT”—with a line graph overlay showing the temporal increase of papers in the fields of “nanotechnology” and “computational physics”. The data is gathered using the Web of Science analysis tool, looking at the topics of ‘computational science’ and ‘nanotechnology’. The data represented are the yearly produce of papers on the subject. Both fields have become increasingly relevant in the new millennium. The 2018 number of papers on the subjects are 824 and 3486 for ‘computational science’ and ‘nanotechnology’ respectively. The number of papers in the domain of computational physics is, of course, a fraction of the absolute use of computer models in physics papers. (Clarivate Analytics, 2020, Accessed: 7.2.2019) This bibliometric analysis supports Galison’s (2017) claim, that the temporal space of the fields of nanotechnology, computational physics and AdS/CFT (holography) are roughly the same; the numbers show that these fields became relatively important fields at science faculties.

42 Ladyman.46,47 In the discussion on the method of string theory many references are made to the Popperian demarcation problem and Pop- per’s views thereon. It is the unconventional relation with empirical data that demands the question whether string theory (and for the same reason, the existence of a multiverse) and the proposed methods for doing string theory belong to the realm of science, non-science, pseudoscience or meta-physics. The field of philosophy of science has, however, not been stationary since Popper published The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1959 and much may be accomplished by a merger of knowledge between the fields.48 This section gives an overview of some of the prevailing opinions on epistemology of string theory.

A dominant voice is Richard Dawid’s, he minted the term non- empirical confirmation (Dawid, 2013, 2019).49 Dawid tries to find an answer to the question what to do with a quickly progressing theory in times when empirical confirmation is not in sight. Dawid (2013, pp. 83 ff.) asserts that before choosing a theory to work on, a scientist assesses several theories. Other then the confirmation of a well developed theory, avant-garde, speculative theories are by definition underdetermined at the point where a scientists chooses to invest her time. Whether a theory is considered trustworthy in the

46For a recent discussion of epistemology of string theory and cosmology see Dardashti et al. (2019). Pigliucci (2019, p. 93) notes in this volume that the discussion on the validity of string theory not only leaves out philosophers, but also gives evidence of a sceptical tendency among a significant group high-energy physicists towards philosophy of science: ‘[it is not] reasonable to expect physicists, already busy with their own theoretical and empirical work, to be conversant in the advancements of philosophy of science over the past half-century. But if an academic invokes (or dismisses) contributions from another academic field, then she has a moral duty to either become sufficiently familiar with the technical literature of that field or invite scholars from that field to join the conversation. So far, the Munich workshop has been a lonely, partial exception to the general trend sketched here.’. This sentiment is echoed by Sridhar (2017, p. 154): ‘Philosophical and methodological issues rarely interest scientists; these are the concerns largely of philosophers and social scientists. So when scientists are drawn into a discussion of these issues, they often enter these debates invoking fixed and old-fashioned notions of these issues. Any new perspective or formulation is met with much suspicion by scientists, but very often, they have nothing to offer as an alternative either. ... What exists now is a seemingly insurmountable gap that was developed and cemented through the 20th century, when the Anglo-American traditions of science have dominated.’. 47To contextualise the claims stating that the debate on the method of string theory is only done by high-energy theorists I will touch on the education and academic position of the debaters in footnotes. Massimo Pigliucci (City University of New York) holds PhD’s in philosophy of science and evolutionary biology. He is currently professor in philosophy. K. Sridhar is a high-energy theorist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. 48Exceptions of scholars looking at string theory and beyond Popper are Ellis (2019), who includes some work of Imre Lakatos in one of his contributions, and Sridhar (2017), noting the foundational role of the realism / anti-realism debate that kept Einstein and Bohr awake at night [3.1.2] 49Dawid (University of Stockholm) was trained as a particle physicist before turning to epistemological issues.

43 absence of empirical evidence depends on the abundance of better, more attractive alternatives, or the scarcity thereof. The main criteria which a scientist––or at least a mathematical physicist––uses in his assessment of new, under-developed theories are: beauty, simplicity and universality. Dawid condenses and formalises these criteria into three ‘core strategies of non-empirical conﬁrmation’. Because of his central role in the debate, I will cite them in full. NAA: The no-alternatives argument. Scientists have looked intensely and for a considerable time for alternatives to a known theory H that can solve a given scientiﬁc problem but haven’t found any. This observation is taken as an indication of the viability of theory H.

MIA: The meta-inductive argument from success in the research field. Theories in the research field that satisfy a given set of conditions have shown a tendency of being viable in the past. This observation is taken to increase the probability that a new theory H that satisfies those conditions is also viable.

UEA: The argument of unexpected explanatory intercon- nections. Theory H was developed to solve a specific problem. Once H was developed, physicists found that H also provides explanations with respect to a range of problems whose solution was not the initial aim of developing the theory. This observation is taken as an indication of the theory’s viability. (Dawid, 2019, p. 114) These strategies are thus, according to Dawid, always employed by scientists in choosing a theory to work on and, before, in choosing a research field, but these strategies get a more profound role when empirical evidence is inherently out of reach. When empirical data are not expected in the foreseeable future, Dawid argues that the above strategies can be sufficient in theory building.50 To establish his claims he uses Bayes theory to make a probabilistic estimate of the truth-value of a theory. Although his critics have dubbed the above ‘post-empirical science’ (e.g. Ellis and Silk, 2014; Hossenfelder, 2014), Dawid stresses that what he calls non-empirical theory evaluation does should only be used for theories that can in principle be empirically tested, theories within a ‘research field’ where empirical evidence is used elsewhere.51 Reactions to Dawid’s stance vary from harsh criticism to appraisal (Pigliucci, 2019, p. 87). 50Although the main criterium, there are other criteria which should be met for non- empirical confirmation to be sufficient, the argument should in addition be ‘about the outside world’ and it should be possible to make a non-empirical argument as specified in Dawid (2019, p. 113). See also note 51. 51For Bayes theory applied to epistemology see Hajek et al. (2010) and Dardashti and Hartmann (2019). Joseph Silk (2019, p. 246) is not convinced by Bayesianism in

44 Carroll (2019) focusses mainly on the Popperian demarcation problem.52 The demarcation criterion: falsifiability, is in his view not delicate enough for the problems of modern physics. He subdivides the criterion in definiteness and empiricism. The former states that a theorem should state something inflexible and specific about nature, the latter implies the need for empirical data to support the theorem. Between the fully definite, empirical theorem and the non-scientific opposite are, according to Carroll, a number of classes of theories that are somewhere in between. An example of a theory that is not falsifiable nor falsifiable is the following: There exist tests that are possible to perform within the laws of physics, but are hopelessly impractical. We can contemplate building a particle accelerator the size of our galaxy, but it’s not something that will happen no matter how far technology progresses... (Carroll, 2019, p. 304) Carroll (2019, pp. 309-310) agrees with Dawid on the existence and role of non-empirical theory assessment if sustained underdetermination is expected (no data are availible in the foreseeable future).53 Ellis and Silk (2014) countered Carroll and Dawid in 2014 by noting that many historically elegant and simple theories have been proven wrong.54 The no-alternatives argument argument is challenged by the simple argument that the future can hold many as yet undiscovered alternatives. Also, they question wether the premise that the four forces of nature need unification is right [2.2.2]. In later work Silk (2019)51 and Ellis (2019) elaborate their stance. Ellis (2019) includes the work of Imre Lakatos, a critique of bayesian epistemology and an argument underlining the need for sound empirical data to maintain a healthy society. theory assessment, writing in prose: ‘Non-empirical tests cannot achieve this goal, no matter how large a cohort of physicists and philosophers assiduously explore the Bayesian paradise of the string theory landscape. They are content to meander in the multiverse, ruminating between subjective priors and free parameters, enlightened by the unreasonable effectiveness of string theory, and inspired by its dangerous irrelevance, while basking in the aura of a final theory of physics that beckons like a mirage from afar.’. Ziman (2000, p. 225) writes on Bayes theory and confirmation, stating: ‘Bayesian reasoning can never be rigorous, but it is a highly effective rhetorical weapon in such conflicts.’ 52Sean Carroll (Caltech) holds a Ph.D. in Astronomy and works in cosmology and quantum physics. 53See Carroll (2019, p. 304) for an overview of the five categories of falsifiability he distinguishes. Pigliucci (2019, p. 91) accuses Carroll, in the same volume, of a naive reading of Popper. On page 309-311 Carroll mentions and rephrases Dawid (2013). ‘It is obviously true that our credences in scientific theories are affected by things other than collecting new data via observation and experiment. ... A correct accounting for the multitude of influences that shape our credences concerning scientific hypotheses is in no sense a repudiation of empiricism; it is simply an acknowledgment of the way it works in the real world.’ 54As examples they mention SU(5) unification and the steady-state theory of cosmology (p. 332 and Ellis 2019, p. 293). George Ellis (University of Capetown) and Joseph Silk (University of Oxford) are theorists in cosmology.

45 Polchinski (2019, p. 340) identifies himself as a ‘practical scientist’ not keen on using the expression: ‘post-empirical science’. His trust in the method of string theory originates from (1) the achievements of string theory, especially the insights on the ties with geometry and black hole entropy and (2) the large interval between the length scale we can measure (using the large hadron collider) and the Planck scale, at which string theory becomes relevant.55 Progress in finding a working theory of quantum gravity—due to the unprecedented width of the energy-gap—will take longer than we are used to. By underlining these facts Polchinski wants to justify a new regime for theory assessment, like proposed by Dawid (2019), whilst specifically criticising the term ‘post-empirical science’. Like Dawid (2019), Polchinski (2019, p. 355) supported his claims with a quasi-Bayesian analysis of the likelihood of the existence of a multiverse, which he estimates at 94%. The sociological and political are touched upon by Hossenfelder (2018) and Pigliucci (2019).56 Pigliucci (2019, p. 88) also notes this conflict of interests in advancing science and the aquiring of funding: ‘The controversy [in epistemology of string theory] doesn’t concern just the usually tiny academic pie, but public appreciation of and respect for both the humanities and the sciences, not to mention millions of dollars in research grants (for the physicists, not the philosophers).’ Hossenfelder (2014, 2017, 2018) connects the security of a tenured position to efforts to broaden the definition of ‘good science’.57 It is worth noting that seemingly without exception, major actors in the debate that explicitly go ‘post-Popper’ (Sridhar, 2017, p. 154)—at least taking into account philosophers of science that come after Popper in time—have, to varying degrees, conservative stances when it comes to broadening the definition of science as proposed by Dawid (2013, 2019).

55See section A for Joseph Polchinski’s (University of California) role in string theory. His background is in high-energy physics. 56Reﬂecting on Hossenfelder (2014), Sridhar (2017, p. 156) underlines the possibility of a connection between politics and epistemology: ‘It is certainly a question to ask whether the entire post-empiricist defence is being put up only to allow some speculative theories to continue their dominance over the physics community.’ 57Smolin (2006) introduces the sociological concept of groupthink to the discussion. Lee Smolin (2006), like Peter Woit (2011), wrote popular accounts on the issue, exerting early inﬂuence on the pace and content of the debate. Smolin is a theorist at the Perimeter Institute, he and Woit (Columbia) both have a PhD in theoretical physics.

46 4 Is string theory within the realm of post-academic science?

In this chapter string theory is examined through the lens of Ziman’s (2000) theory of post-academic science. More specifically, string physics is observed through the theory of post-academic science as summarised and restructured by myself. I have tried to condense Ziman’s book within his framework which uses an adapted version of Merton’s norms. I found thirteen key characteristics of post-academic science. But, in the process of gathering characteristics, I found it more fitting to regroup these characteristics in a new structure which is related, but not equal to Ziman’s structure of five adapted Mertonian norms. My re-grouping is structured using a system of numbers and letters in section 2.4. Each number refers to a group of related characteristics, each letter is an arbitrary marker for an individual characteristic. To be sure: the subsections of section 2.4 do follow Ziman’s ‘Mertonian’ structure, but the numbers indicate the new structure, which is also the structure of this chapter. The new structure aims to add clarity when discussing post- academic science with respect to string theory research. Like Ziman’s own structure, mine is not the only effective way to give structure to post-academic science.58 In retrospect, one might name the five groups of characteristics in my structure the increasing influence of (1) informal communication, (2) capital and politics (or: influence from without), (3) Local scientific practice, (4) Project-based research and the advent of a (5) post-academic career-path.59

4.1 Informal communication structures ‘In the time of post-academic science the ever increasing volume and geographical reach of communication, especially the advent of the internet, benefit speed in formal communication. ... This forms a threat for the formal communication system involving a clear cycle of: discovery, justification, criticism and revision.’ [2.5.1, 1] Within the physics community several shifts can be observed in the way scientists communicate their findings. Most notable is the distribution of informal communication over longer distances. The academic task of sending and receiving formal communication through journals or books has been increasingly shared with the preprint circuit. These preprints are defined in a variety of ways, but are at least ‘temporary documents whose function is to bridge the time-

58See Ziman (2000, p. 32): ‘For our present purposes, however, the main question about the Mertonian scheme is not its normative force. It is whether it provides a row of pegs on which to hang a naturalistic account of some of the social and psychological features of academic science. These features can, of course, be analysed in a variety of ways.’ 59I did not strive to formulate ﬁve diﬀerent groups within my structure, but—perhaps due to Ziman’s structure—the number of groups is conserved.

47 gap created by publication delays’ (Larivièreet al., 2014, p. 1157).60 A clear definition of a preprint fails because it has been changing over time. It ranges from a ‘clumsy, bulky, semilegible document, being a duplicated version of a paper submitted for publication but not yet accepted ... a mechanised version of the decent and proper custom of writing to one’s friends, colleagues and rivals about one’s current work’ in 1968, to an important part of scholar communication today in some fields (Ziman et al., 1968, p. 110 in Larivièreet al., 2014). The current digital preprint infrastructure reaches orders of magnitude more readers than its direct predecessor (Glaze, 1999).61 Recently, one author even argued that post-print, formal communication is in some cases not more than a ‘formality’ (Kaiser, 2017). The citing of digital pre-print articles is widely accepted—key to its success. In 2001 the majority of renowned peer-reviewed journals in the physical sciences already allowed citing of non peer-reviewed preprints, but many publishers were still hesitant and some were re- luctant or undecided (Brown, 2001). With the increased use in the twenty-first century, however, acceptance of pre-prints became the norm. The precise role of preprints within the physics community is not entirely lucid (Larivièreet al., 2014, p. 1160). As an exception within the scientific community, a certain kind of preprint circuit has existed in physics theory departments for over six decades. This circuit was never created to substitute peer-reviewed journals, nevertheless it has changed the way physicists communicate findings. One example in which this is evident comes from a study in reading sources of the astrophysics community. In 1990 and in 2002 the astrophysics community read 0.2 and 18.5 per cent of all the articles they read in pre-print form, respectively (Tenopir et al., 2003). This trend is likely to have continued and thus further increased pre-print use over the last two decades. The arXiv is currently the main pre-print platform for physicists. It plays an especially large role within the high energy physics (hep)

60On electronic printing in general Ziman (2000, p. 110) states: ‘ Some of these media, such as ‘electronic journals’, have features that challenge the very notion of a formal scientific archive.’. On preprints specifically he highlights a different aspect: ‘It is a nice point, moreover, whether launching a research report into cyber space is tantamount to publication. An out-of-print academic book, or an ancient number of the proceedings of an obscure learned society, can usually be tracked down in a copyright library. But membership of a post-academic research network may be limited to recognised specialists on the subject. Even an electronic system for the exchange of ‘preprints’ – that is, research reports that have not yet been published – can be more like an exclusive club, or even a secret society, than an open-sided ‘invisible college’ ... Indeed, membership of such a network may be a mixed blessing. It gives early access to new research results, but may be an unconscious barrier to communication with outsiders.’ (p. 114). 61In an article called ‘The Future of String Theory’, Schwarz (1987, p. 201) speculates on what is now reality: ‘Actually our main use of computers is likely to be to produce prettier preprints. More disturbing is that we can also produce them faster. If present trends continue we could reach a situation in which certain theorists turn out preprints as fast as the rest of us can read them!’.

48 community, where the platform originated in 1991. The arXiv thus succeeded at least three decades of paper preprints distributions (Brown, 2001, p. 294). After a quick rise in the 1990s and since 2000, the hep arXiv has been receiving an almost constant number of submissions, ‘suggesting 100% participation’ (arXiv.org, 2019). Efforts within the mathematics community started later and have been increasing in the twenty-first century, only to stabilise around 2010. Brown (2010) thinks the expansion towards online preprinting in physics was received as a natural step and stirred little controversy because of the relatively old culture of preprinting. A similar, more recent development in the biological sciences has received considerably more resistance (Kaiser, 2017). Building on the widespread acceptance of (physics) preprints today, the inventor of the arXiv expects an even more profound role for preprints communication networks of science in the future. They could, in his view, evolve to ‘a more powerful knowledge structure’. Although it does not become clear from his writings what this would exactly entail, it would at least be able to better suit the young ‘digital generation’, increase access and create bidirectional communications more alike the ‘social web’.62 This switch to E-prints does not mean that anything will be published. ‘So far, all the evidence suggests that the growth of e-preprints in mathematics and physics does not herald the demise of peer- reviewed journal articles’, write Larivièreet al. (2014, p. 1168), and, perhaps more important, ‘The ways in which scientists use arXiv’ is ’highly nuanced’. But, as becomes clear from the following example, arXiv electronic preprints influence communication for many reasons. The preprints on the arXiv are unreviewed thus they are generally published in chronologic order. It turns out that even due to this innocent artefact of sorting, the specific time of the day at which a pre-print is published increases or decreases its chances of being cited. (Haque and Ginsparg, 2010) To assess the reach and impact of preprints in string theory I will turn to the three most citet papers of 2018 (table 1).63 Com- bined, fourteen per cent of the sources used in these papers are arXiv sources; articles that have yet to appear in peer-review journals when cited.

Does the advent of preprints mean that string theory communication ﬁts in a postacademic frame? Ziman characterises two features

62‘My hope is that rather than merely using electronic infrastructure as a more eﬃcient means of distribution, the revolution-in-waiting will ultimately lead to a more powerful knowledge structure, fundamentally transforming the ways in which we process and organise scientiﬁc data. ... I have sympathy for more interactivity: in today’s social web, a one-way channel seems an anachronism.’ (Ginsparg, 2011, pp. 146-47). 63The three most cited papers of 2018 as of the 13th of june, 2019 (Clarivate Analytics, 2020), not considering review papers.

49 Total # # of % of references arXiv references Danielsson and Riet (2018) 201 25 12 Denef et al. (2018) 27 6 22 Chapman et al. (2018) 99 14 14 ——— P ——— 327 45 14

Table 1: An analysis of the share of non peer reviewed information in the three most cited string theory papers of 2018 (as of the sixteenth of February, 2020). The table shows the total number of papers cited in each article, and the share of cited articles that were only published on the ArXiv. In this sample the number of arXiv and non-arXiv preprints cited is over ten per cent. We may expect a similar ﬁgure for the articles and pre-prints that have been cited by the three papers above, thus even the cited references probably includes some non- or superﬁcially- reviewed information. The information is taken from Clarivate Analytics (2020), with search topic ”string theory”. [1.2]

of postacademic communication. Postacademic communication features (a) informal communication with a global reach and (b) communication that breaks a simple cycle of: discovery, justification, criticism and revision to ‘a never-ending, off-the-record process involving a whole cluster of informal contributions’ (Ziman, 2000, p. 114) [2.5.1]. Although use of preprints and the arXiv may be ‘nuanced’, the arXiv clearly does not satisfy the strict norms of formal communication [2.2.1, 2.5.1]. Since the advent of the internet the informal structure of preprints has become global in its reach whilst it grew with its readership to become a significant part of scientific communication. We may thus speak of informal, global communication. The early prevalence and acceptance of online preprinting in the hep-community puts the field ahead of the post-academic flock. Because string theorists use the arXiv in a ’nuanced’ way and because they still use formal literature, the academic research cycle has not vanished completely. It is, however, clear that the cycle is altered and its components are merged in many cases. For example, an arXiv article (not jet subjected to peer-review) has a significant chance of being cited in a peer-reviewed journal (see table 1). It thus skips the cycle-elements of revision and criticism. Also, when scientists read their daily digest of arXiv papers, new un- or lesser- reviewed ideas (compared to the archive of the academic culture) may influence their research; the border between formal and informal communication fades. In Ziman’s (2000) view a digital communication infrastructure endangers, together with the prevalence of formal communication, the norm of communalism [2.5.1, 1], mainly because ‘an electronic text can be amended so easily that there never seems a moment when it ought to be brought to a firm conclusion. The various phases of the research cycle – discovery, justification, criticism and revision –

50 merge together in a never-ending, off-the-record process involving a whole cluster of informal contributions.’ (Ziman, 2000, p. 114). It is debatable to what degree this is the case now, with stringent peer- pressure to follow academic standards. But when keeping in mind that the founder of the arXiv has ‘sympathy for more interactivity’ and promotes a view in which ‘a one-way channel seems an anachronism’ (Ginsparg, 2011, pp. 146-47), and that the platform he founded enjoys something close to a monopoly on pre-prints in a number of fields, Ziman’s (2000) fear of the merging of the constituents of the research cycle is not outlandish. Also, we know that the infrastructure of publishing does matter for the content in spreads, in its basic architecture—as evident from the vital function of formal communication in the development of academic science—and in minor design choices, where the effect is measurable (Larivièreet al., 2014). This is not to say that it would be best to keep the publishing infrastructure always as it was in 1800, the alternative that we have to work with can in theory be better in every respect if it is scrutinised constantly through a healthy, informed debate, and democratically constructed on a scientific basis; where new technologies are used were they are shown to be beneficial (for science, not only speed), and limited elsewhere. My fear is that a move towards preprints is, to some extent, a trade-off increasing speed and quantity but at the same time en- dangering content and quality; this new kind of publishing may focus more on production in the short-term rather than staying healthy in the long-run. I wonder if the shift in question is unequivocally beneficial in the long term, also because the ‘old’ archive still seems to be working adequately in less technical fields.64,65

4.2 Epistemic pollution; is string theory linked with private and political entities? The post-academic network links between academic scientists with nodes that do not have to adhere to the academic ethos (e.g. private companies or governments). Academic scientists differ in principle from non-academic nodes in that they do not benefit from secrecy but contrary gather their rewards by publications that get acknowledged by the scientific community. [2.5.1, 2A] A thorough analysis of non-communal nodes in the network that has been and is generating and is generating string theory is beyond the scope of this thesis. Some insight can be gathered from the information gathered in table 2. If we take the number of papers (co-)funded by a certain institution as a measure of its influence, the public sector of the US is still the single biggest funder in string

64E.g. in the humanities where subscriptions to journals are still aﬀordable, books take up a larger share of communication and pre-print publishing is not (yet) in sight. 65Although one may agree or disagree with my view, it should be noted that within (and outside) the ﬁeld of high energy physics, there is very little formal debate on the topic of non-peer-reviewed publishing.

51 theory, (co-)funding more that one in four papers. The second most inﬂuential institution has the clearly political mission of ‘sustaining leadership in science’, ‘critical’ to ‘America’s security and prosperity since the end of World War II’ (US Department of Energy, 2019). The Department of Energy is in part a continuation of the Atomic Energy Commission. The National Science Foundation was founded after the war and took over several physics labs from the Department of Defence. The military character of funding in physics has clearly decreased from the 1950s, when nearly all spending was, at least according to one author, ‘de facto predominantly military’.28 [3.1.1]

Institution # % Country All 1058 100 — US National Science Foundation 158 14,93 USA US Department of Energy 122 11,53 USA European research council 99 9,36 Europe Simons Foundation 89 8,41 USA (Private) — James Simons related ∗ 99 9,36 Sci. and Tech. Facilities Council 76 7,18 UK Natural Science Foundation of China 73 6,90 China JSPS 61 5,77 Japan Nat. Sci. and Eng. Research Council 55 5,20 Canada INFN 41 3,88 Italy Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft 27 2,55 Germany ——— P ——— 801 75,71 — . . Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation 14 1,32 Sweden (Private) John Templeton Foundation 11 1,04 USA (Private) Delta ITP 9 0,85 Netherlands

Table 2: The ten institutions that funded the largest number of string theory papers in the year 2019 according to Clarivate Analytics (2020) (as of the sixteenth of February, 2020). The hashtag refers to the number of articles (co-)funded by each institution. For reasons evident from the text, I added the Dutch Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Swedish Wallenberg Foundation and the US based John Templeton Foundation. The Web of Science search topics used are: ”string theory”, ”M-theory”, ”AdS/CFT”, ”D-branes” and ”superstring theory”. The plurality of speciﬁc string theory terms are used to ensure a maximal number of found articles in the ﬁeld. The main chunk of unique articles is found with the topics: ”string theory” and ”AdS/CFT”. Adding the topics: ”M-theory”, ”D-branes” and ”superstring theory” results in a ten per cent increase in articles found. [1.2] (∗) “James Simons related” corresponds to articles sponsored by the Simons Foundation, the Simons Center at Stony Brook University and the Heising Simons Foundation (the philanthropy fund of James Simons’ daughter Liz Simons).

52 Notable are the large private contribution from the Simons Found- ation and the significant private contributions from the foundations of John Templeton and Knut and Allice Wallenberg. These three benefactors were the only private entities supporting string theory in 2018 and the largest in 2019. The trio is not only notable because, taken together, the number of papers supported by them surpasses the number supported by the European Research Commission [!], but, rather because all three foundations have direct and very strong relations to the financial industry; al three gentlemen started and owned successful investment funds. James Simons is a prominent figure in the field of geometry. He co-discovered the Chern-Simons invariants often used in string theory. Among other things this has led him to become professor and emeritus chairman of the mathematics department at Stony Brook University. In 1978 Simons left academia to start a hedge fund, aiming at high profits through quantitative analysis. At the time, quant- itive analysis in finance did not play a significant role. Now, forty-two years later, his company, Renaissance Technologies, reaps immense profits for its investors who have entrusted the company almost one- hundred-and-ten billion dollars (or, 112 times the 2017 expenditure of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and fourteen times the budget of the US National Science Foundation (fintel.io, 2019; NWO, 2018; Science Staff, 2018)).66 To achieve such high levels of profit, the company employs a large workforce of successful academics in the physical sciences and mathematics who build an ever-smarter numerical machine. The machine buys and sells stock and derivatives thereof. The exact methods of the company are, of course, well hidden secrets.67 Over the last three decades, James and his wife have contributed part of their wealth to fundamental research through the Simons Foundation. Initially they supported science only indirectly through scholarship and grants. In 2007 they offered a large grant to Stony Brook University, a sum of 60 million dollars, to build what became the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics.68 Since 2012, to in-

66‘For nearly three decades,’ the Renaissance Technologies ten billion dollar Medallion fund ‘has gone up by eighty per cent annually, on average, before fees.’ (Max, 2017). 67Known is that the company was accused by the US senate permanent subcommittee on investigations of avoiding 6.8 billion US$ in taxes using ‘unethical trading tricks’ (Max, 2017; Levin and McCain, 2014). 68The board of trustees of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics employs many famous string theorists, including Cumrum Vafa and Juan Malcedena. Edward Witten is an alumnus. Apart from the famous theorists, three of the eleven members on the board of trustees of the Simons Center at Stony Brook University work for Renaissance Technologies. Robert Lourie is the head of futures research and Vincent and Stephen Della Pietra, siblings, manage the General Research Group working on statistical methods to model the stock market. A fourth member is also the ‘director of mathematics and the physical sciences’ at the Simons Foundation. The Board of trustees has ‘the ultimate responsibility for the Centre’s activities, personnel, budgets, and ﬁnances’. (Simons Center, 2019)

53 crease their eﬀorts in the physical sciences, the foundation also hires scientists directly at its Flatiron Institute for computational sciences (consisting of four centres, including the Center for Computational Quantum Physics and the Center for Computational Astrophysics).69 Whether the Foundation and the institute adhere fully to the academic ethos is not clear; results are published but the choice of problems, for example, is not fully with the scientists. Problem choice is shared with James Simons, who stated in an interview: ‘Taste in science is very important, to distinguish what’s a good problem and what’s a problem that no one’s going to care about the answer to anyway–that’s taste. And I think I have good taste.’ (Max, 2017). Knut Wallenberg (1853-1938) was a Swedish banker and politi- cian. The Swedish bank Enskilda Banken started the daughter investment company Investor AB under his direction. Investor AB has become a sizeable investment fund with an asset value of approximately 38 billion euros. Knut entrusted his fortune, including a large stake in Investor, to his Knut and Allice Wallenberg Founda- tion. Through Investor, the foundation now owns a large stake and an even larger portion of voting rights in the bank and insurer SEB Group.70 Currently, the foundation is headed by a new generation of Wallenberg family members: Peter and Marcus. Both are bankers. Peter is among other the current CEO of Investor. Marcus was CEO of Investor AB in the 1990s, is the chairman of the SEB Group and was the vice chair of the Institute of International Finance.71 (Olsson, 2019)

69To gather talent, the Flatiron institute offers scientists a fifty per cent salary increase, the option to work only three days a week, immediate access to high-end supercomputing and no obligation to teach or write research proposals. (Max, 2017) 70In 1972, Enskilda merged with Skandinaviska Banken to form Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB), a bank and insurance company with 15.000 employees (SEB, 2019). The largest stakeholder in SEB is, by a significant margin, Investor AB with 20.8 per cent ownership and voting rights (SEB, 2019). Investor AB is in turn owned by members of the Wallenberg family (over fifty per cent of voting rights), the largest part of this share is at the Knut and Allice Wallenberg Foundation, which enjoys twenty per cent of capital ownership and 43 per cent of voting rights (Investor AB, 2019). Thus, up to a significant extent the Knut and Allice Wallenberg Foundation controls—and is catered for by the profits of—SEB, one of Sweden’s largest banks. 71The Institute of International Finance (IIF) is an institute created by banks, currently its members are commercial, central and development banks, investment funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds—the central banks of at least the USA, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands are not associated. Some companies beyond banks are associated, notably three out of four members of the D-ITP Industry Advisory Council (see below): Shell, McKinsey & Company and ABN-AMRO Bank (Institute of International Finance, 2019). In analysing the influence of the IIF on the Greek debt crises, Kalaitzake (2017, p. 409) describes ‘private business associations like the IIF’ as ‘a critical locus of political power’ , and continues: ‘it is important to recognise that these associations need not be conceived of simply as crude lobbyists—though they may often function in this manner—but in terms of their own organisational dilemmas: helping firms to solve collective action problems by promoting intraindustry consensus, on the one hand, and on the other, establishing themselves as credible and useful partners in global governance with policymakers and regulatory agencies.’

54 Also John Templeton (1912-2008) acquired wealth through investment funds. His Foundation focusses mainly on the spiritual. It has assets of 800 million US$ and aims to answer ‘deep questions’ using science, including string theory research. It awards a prize for scientific research in the spiritual realm with prize money that exceeds the Nobel prize. It should be noted that the foundation, since John Templeton left as a director in 2009, has little direct relation to investment banking today. (Templeton Foundation, 2019) My own institute, the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Amsterdam, is collaborating with the theoretical departments of Leiden and Utrecht to form the Delta institute for The- oretical Physics (D-ITP). D-ITP has strategic partnerships with four non-academic partners: Royal Dutch Shell (extraction of fossil fuels), ABN-AMRO (banking), McKinsey & Company (consultancy) and the Dutch Forensic Institute (forensic research). They form the Industry Advisory Council which is allowed to advice the scientific board at least once every year.72 (Delta-ITP, 2019) Why is the quickly growing financial sector (Krippner, 2005) inclined to support string theory research?73 First and foremost, both are increasingly dependent on esoteric mathematics.74 Physics theory departments produce experts whereafter the financial industry

72The three companies are quite remarkable choices for tying with industry. Royal Dutch Shell needs no further explanation. ABN-AMRO is a bank that resulted from the merger of four banks, of which one (the Nederlandse Handels Maatschappij, founded by King William I of the Netherlands) was ‘[i]ntended more or less as a reincarnation of the VOC’ (Van Driel et al., 2015, p. 1285). McKinsey & Company builds its success on a model (‘[t]he diktat of accounting metrics to reorganise an organisation’ (Engelen et al., 2014, 1081)) that has played a part at the UvA in what Engelen et al. (2014, 1088) fear to be ‘deepening the disenfranchisement and deprofessionalization of the teaching and research staff’ and so ‘making a parody of what academic teaching and research should be about, namely non-interested, curiosity-driven additions to and reproduction of the collective repository of systematically corroborated insights that we call academic knowledge.’ 73Sornette (2014, esp. p. 6) gives a historical overview of the cross fertilisation between physics (in general) and finance. He notes that the first entanglements of the two subjects are at least as early as 18th century when Adam Smith was inspired by Newton’s concept of forces. 74Mathematics and logic enter in the creation of new financial products. But perhaps even more in the analysis of markets. Models that predict markets also shape markets, they are ‘an engine, not a camera’ (MacKenzie, 2006; Pistor, 2013). Take for example credit ratings: ‘While initially introduced as a commensuration tool to establish a descriptive ordinal ranking of the creditworthiness of corporations and states, the introduction of securitisation in the 1970s drove the credit-rating agencies to hire a raft of ‘quants’ whose probabilistic methods imbued the ratings with cardinal significance.’ (Coombs and van der Heide, 2020, p. 5) More generally, ‘Conceptualising the world and making the world are wrapped up with each other’ (Tsing, 2012, p. 506). ‘On the supply side of this process [financialisation] financial institutions stepped forward with a vast array of new financial instruments: futures, options, derivatives, hedge funds, etc.’ Jim Simons and many other quants, educated in the faculties of mathematics and physics, are both predicting and creating these instruments and are thus important players on the supply side of financialisation.

55 employs a significant number of them (Delta-ITP, 2019, Sornette, 2014, p. 49). But another, more speculative clue might be found in a parallel ‘decoupling’ from reality. The literature on economy and financialisation has long identified a drift in the decoupling of financial profit and productivity in the real economy. Foster (2007, p. 3) cites Nobel-prize winning economist James Tobin on decoupling of profits from finance and social productivity: ‘I confess to an uneasy Physiocratic suspicion...that we are trowing more and more of our resources...into activities that generate high private rewards disproportionate to their social productivity.’ Tobin also notes that already Keynes was aware of, and worried about, this process. Foster (2007, p. 2–4) explains, quoting Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, that: ‘The double process of faltering real investment and bourgeoning finalization’ results from a lack of investment possibilities in the real economy for always accumulating capital. ‘On the supply side of this process financial institutions stepped forward with a vast array of new financial instruments: futures, options, derivatives, hedge funds, etc.’ Technical and complex financial derivatives, mathematical structures in legal form (Pistor, 2013), become increasingly distant abstrac- tions from the commodities they claim to represent (Asiyanbi, 2018, p. 532). This may remind the reader of the discussion on the method of string theory wherein some actors try, in a formal matter (legal in the academic sense), to weaken the requirements on empirical evidence and thus promote a further decoupling of abstract mathematical theory and observed reality in theoretical physics [3.3]. Does this economic love story in which the two protagonists (string theory research and the makers of, and gamblers on, financial derivatives) are currently entangled result from a shared objective: a decoupling from reality? Or is it just a lucky coincidence, where an alteration in the accumulation regime just happens to thrive on esoteric mathematics? A lucky coincidence for a very select group, and bad luck for others, as Paul Sweezy (1994) wrote long before the banking crisis of 2007: Traditionally financial expansion has gone hand-in-hand with prosperity in the real economy. Is it really possible that this is no longer true, that now in the late twentieth century the opposite is more nearly the case: in other words, that now financial expansion feeds not on a healthy real economy but on a stagnant one? The answer to this question, I think, is yes it is possible, and it has been happening. And I will add that I am quite convinced that the inverted relation between the financial and the real is the key to understanding the new trends in the world [economy]. (Paul Sweezy, 1994, as quoted by Foster, 2007, p. 4) One may wonder what the extent of the influence of the earlier mentioned private foundations is, when they only support roughly

56 Figure 4: An analysis of the social identity of the top ten funding agencies in table 2—together funding more than 75 per cent of papers on string theory and the AdS/CFT conjecture. Private (11%) refers to the Simons foundation, the only fully private fund in the top ten list. The Simons foundation is an entity in which the decision making is in the hands of a small group or perhaps even a single individual. The share of ‘public-private’ institutions (32%) refers to government entities that have a stated mission of advancing of public wealth by the support of industry. It overlaps with Ziman’s (2000) term of ‘quasi-academic public agencies’ which ‘are instructed to favour projects with manifest ‘wealth-creating’ prospects’ (p. 173). The last and largest category of ‘public’ entities (57%) are those that primarily focus on the advancement of science an sich. These are generally very large public agencies and their stance to disinterestedness and public wealth objectives may vary per project or subdivision.

one in ten papers?75 Or, similarly, to what degree the (political) US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation influence theory (together financing approximately one in three string papers). As mentioned, direct funding is not the only force controlling the direction of research. However, Holman and Bruner (2017) give early evidence (by modelling research dynamics) that direct, selective funding with a certain objective can bias a whole community, even without financial dominance. Although their concerns stem from pharmaceut- ical research, they scrutinise a convincing case of selective funding in this field, their model is general and not based on a particular branch of science. They once more underline the complexity of the present-day network creating science.

75In papers on the topic of holography (‘AdS/CFT’) this fraction is actually one-in-ﬁve. See the end of section 4.3 and table 3.

57 The preliminary analysis above points at non-academic nodes in the network generating string theory. But both the extent of private influence and the number of associated nodes are yet to be studied in detail. As universities in the West are increasingly ‘adopting a market model’ string theory is certainly not excluded from operating in a system that is organised on quasi-market relationships. (Ziman and the Science Policy Support Group, 1991; Engelen et al., 2014; Halffman and Radder, 2015).76 From figure 4 and table 2 we find that its semi-autonomous research entities are supported by various funding bodies, private and public. [2.5.3, 2B] But exactly where the generating network of string theory is located within the broad range of conceivable networks, stretching from networks hardly linked with non-academic nodes to those which have reached saturation in the channels of exchange between academic and non-academic entities, is not clear. Looking outside of academia, we find that string theory is conceptualised in an increasingly neoliberal society. Neoliberal governance and string theory share almost the exact same temporal and geographical space. Thatcher came to power in 1979 and in 1981 Reagan followed.77 According to Streeck (2016, p. 155), the ‘almost-victory’ of Fried- manian, Anglo-American neoliberalism today is built upon mid-20th- century German ordoliberalism; or, rather, it is an ‘updated version’ of this ordoliberalism.78 This connection between ordo- and neoliberalism was struck first by Michel Foucault (2008) in 1979. He encoun- ters it while studying the work of Walter Eucken of the ordoliberal Freiburg school. The action that the ordoliberal state should take, according to Foucault’s reading of Eucken, is abstaining from any direct interference with the ‘tendencies of the market’ (which are:

76The part-time altruists, part-time hedge-fund-managers fit within the discourse of philanthrocapitalism, in which ‘altruism is a useful business strategy’. A discourse that is seems to be more and more accepted in public: ‘... what is most notable about the new philanthropy is the explicitness of the belief that as private enrichment purportedly advances the public good, increased wealth concentration is to be commended rather than questioned.’ (McGoey, 2012, p. 187 and p. 197) This might be key to the fact that scientific funding origins in string theory are so little questioned; scientists who regularly apply for funding must notice the abundance of finance-related funding. 77The radical economic policies of these leaders include highest marginal tax rate cuts of 42 (USA) and 58 (UK) per cent (Piketty, 2014, fig. 14.1) and successful ‘attacks’ on trade unions (Streeck, 2016, p. 81). Their policies shouldered on strong ideologies, Thatcher, famously said, ‘there is no such thing as society’. These are only some of the symptoms of neoliberalism ‘which is often either completely unknown or largely misun- derstood by higher education scholars and practitioners’ (Saunders, 2010, p. 44); see also Saunders’ more elaborate explanation of neoliberalism and its origins. It is because of the lack of common knowledge on neoliberalism, especially for those readers with a physics background, that I take the liberty to briefly go through Foucault’s reading of this notion. 78Ordoliberalism gained traction in post-war Germany, ‘took over the Ministry of Eco- nomics’ and so enabled the wirtschaftswunder (Streeck, 2016, p. 154). Note that the Anglo-American neoliberalism coincides in time and space with the conception of string theory. Ordoliberalism, however, only gained traction after the center of physics moved from Germany to the USA [3.1.1].

58 the minimisation of costs, the global minimisation of profit of enterprises, and the local maximisation of profit of enterprises trough, among other things, reduction of production costs Foucault (2008, p. 138)). These tendencies thrive in the presence of competition. But, note the ordoliberals, competition is an aspect but definitely not always ‘a given’ in nature. For competition to be existent and principal, a market often has to be constructed. The ordoliberal state should thus never interfere with market tendencies directly, but is must interfere, through so called organising actions, on the ‘conditions of the existence of markets’ or the framework (in Ordo-speak) of the market. To be sure, the framework should be constructed such that its reach is maximal, such that the entirety of society can be run by the efficiency of markets that comes with competition. Indeed, for Eucken it is ‘given that economic-political regulation can only take place through the market’, so he asks, ‘how can we modify these material, cultural, technical, and legal bases ... so that the market economy can come into play?’ (Foucault, 2008, p. 141). This ideal of market creation is foundational for both ordo- and neoliberals. As the West moves away from the Keynesian social welfare state in the early 1980s towards neoliberal governance, the market is increasingly freed from democratic intervention. As a result, the factor capital has become increasingly powerful (Piketty, 2020, fig. 11.1), ‘de-democratised’ (Streeck, 2016, p. 156) and thus central.79 The essential trait is that in the social welfare state does interfere with market mechanisms (i.e. planning) thus socio-economic power is (ideally) democratic and responsibility for power is centred in a small group of human beings (even in a dictatorship power is centred in a person). In todays neoliberalism the market is deliberately kept away from democratic regulation and a constant effort is turning everything remotely possible into a market, which leaves responsibility for power increasingly to a (non-human) multitude of corporations or other market-players, only equal to humans for the law. Power is so rendered complex and ‘centerless’.80 This ‘unthinkable’ centerlessness of neoliberal capitalism has become a norm in society, also in the university.81 It requires us to

79See also the closely related section on financialisation [4.3], that shows the increasing power of capital. And, as an example of contemporary, radical construction of frameworks of markets, the literature on carbon markets (turning conservation and nature itself into a market) and especially the UN REDD+ framework (Asiyanbi, 2018; Lovell and MacKenzie, 2014). 80‘ ... ‘we know perfectly well that the government is not pulling the strings, but nevertheless...’ The disavowal happens in part because the centerlessness of global capitalism is radically unthinkable.’ (Fisher, 2009, p. 63). These summarised arguments on neoliberalism and its centerlessness, somewhat beyond the scope of this thesis, are worked out in detail by Streeck (2016), Foucault (2008) and Fisher (2009). 81Engelen et al. (2014, p. 1081) examine policies ay my own institution, exemplary: ‘The 1997 reorganisation of the UvA governance structure ... aimed to create ‘inner market functions’. Instead of lump sum financing, the different units comprising the UvA—education, research and services—would receive funds based on a small number

59 think of the generating network of string physics as something far more complex and obscured then, for example, the network generating physics after the cold war.

4.3 Local, specialised and technical knowledge Mathematics and machinery Epistemically, applying methods that are universal, in the sense that they leave little room for subjectivity, results in knowledge deemed increasingly local. These methods are for example mathematics, logic and computer models. The locality comes from the relative decline in the number of people with appropriate specialist training; people who actually understand these methods. Comparably, the formal languages of scientists become increasingly specialised and incom- prehensible for outsiders, and thus local. [2.5.2, 3B] Edward Witten is the only physicist to have won the highest honour in mathematics, the Fields medal. String theory is, indeed, highly mathematical. Rickles (2014) writes: ‘Copernicus wrote on the frontispiece to his De Revolutionibus that “mathematics is written for mathematicians”. I think there is an element of this attitude in the string theory literature, making it very hard for non-string theorists to penetrate its labyrinthine structure.’ String theory and mathematics form a ‘perfect marriage’ (Veneziano, 1998, p. 187). Computers have a lesser role in string theory. Although computational methods are increasingly used, string theory is still, like in 1987, ‘concept intensive’ rather than ‘number intensive’ (Schwarz, 1987, p. 201).82 Does the reach of mathematics in string theory render a string theorist a skilled technician who focuses on perfection of her technical skills rather than investing in her intellectual originality? [2.5.4, 3E] Thirty-Two years ago, just after the first string revolution, Schwarz (1987, p. 200) already noted that the ‘sociological consequences’ of the leap in mathematical sophistication needed of the string theorist need to be ‘considered’. Is the theorist spending an amount of her of KPIs. [Key Performance Indicators]’. When ‘[i]nstitutions are measured against other institutions, researchers compete with one another for funds and universities for students’, education and research are, through action on the framework (i.e. the top down enactment of e.g. project-funding structures, public-private partnerships, inner market functions within universities, etc.), ‘successfully’ converted into markets (Halffman and Radder, 2015, p. 168). This success is debatable, also because ‘[t]he supposed marketisation of education ... rests on a confused and underdeveloped analogy: are students the consumers of the service or its product?’ (Fisher, 2009, p. 42). See also McGettigan (2013, p. 142) who writes about the increasingly debt financed US universities, directly related to ‘tuition fee increases, since the ability of universities to raise tuition fees at will is well-regarded by credit rating agencies.’ 82String theory very recently met the computer by using, amongst other, numerical models to explore the string landscape (Cicoli et al., 2019), machine learning (He, 2017) and computational algebraic geometry (He et al., 2012).

60 energy and time on mathematics such that her physical insights suf- fer? Ten years later Veneziano (1998, pp. 187-88) ponders over the ‘marriage’ of mathematics and physics and indicates that he has ex- perienced a transformation in the role of mathematics in high-energy physics from the 60s to the 90s. In the 1960s mathematics was still a ‘useful tool’ but the role of mathematics in the 90s is better described as ‘a driving force, a true guiding principle for theoretical research’. After subsequently noting that the revolutions in string theory were mainly of mathematical nature, Veneziano advises the string theorist to focus on physical problems, rather than on the mathematically—or the technically—feasible. In his own words: ‘Let us invent / tools that suit our problems / rather than / problems that suit our tools.’ (Veneziano, 1998, p. 189, emphasis in original).83 The ‘marriage’ of mathematics and physics goes back at least to Galileo. The relevant question is, of course, not whether there should be mathematics in physics but wether the amount is justified, whether we can speak of a ‘happy marriage’. According to Eugene Wigner (1960, pp. 6, 2) the ability of mathematical theory to describe nature is ‘mysterious’ and irrational; i.e. the principal role mathematics plays in describing nature is perhaps inexplicable but nonetheless very real. Bohr, as noted in section 3.1.2, was somewhat less impressed than Wigner and other colleagues by the abilities of mathematics in describing nature. According to Paul Dirac, for example, he seldom provided explanations that could be condensed to equations (Kaiser, 1994, p. 135). Considering the mammoth role of Bohr in modern physics it seems that the amount of mathematics that a physicist uses in her work is—or was—at least in part a matter subject to personal, political and cultural preferences. But regardless of the above, it is evident from both the amount of interest coming from the financial community and the hiring strategy of financial, technology companies such as Renaissance Technologies, that the theoretical physicist who masters sophisticated mathematics, exemplary the string theorist, is ready to work as an engineer without the need for much further training (Max, 2017); i.e. she has already mastered the appropriate technical skills to be a skilled technician in the increasingly powerful financial industry [4.2].

Local knowledge ... it are the academic norms of originality and universalism that are the foundation for present-day hyperﬁne specialisation that is post-academic. ... [specialisation] result[s] in post-academic science which has become so ‘elaborate and esoteric’ that only a group of trained scientists can understand its proceedings. In other words,

83Sabine Hossenfelder (2018, see: pp. 229-30) comes to a similar conclusion in her book titled ‘Lost in Math’: ‘The ﬁrst lesson I draw, therefore, is this: If you want to solve a problem with math, ﬁrst make sure it really is a problem ... Physics isn’t math. It’s choosing the right math.’

61 [specialisation] leads to local knowledge. [2.5.2, 3A] In his historical account of string theory, Dean Rickles (2014, p. viii-x) spends more than a few words to underline that string theory is elaborate. ‘[String theory] could likely match more chronologically mature theories in physics in terms of the number of physicist-hours that have been devoted to it’, it has an ‘esoteric reputation’ and is a ‘difficult subject for outsiders (and, I would guess, many insiders!) to understand’. The note on the understanding of insiders is revealing, it underlines apart from the complexity the vast size of the knowledge body of string theory; the problems that are worked on are numerous and the field encompasses various sub-specialisations. Post-academic science does not seem to be at odds with local theories, it seems to favour ‘pragmatic finalisation’ over ‘explanatory unification’ (209). Consequently, ‘post-academic science is post- modern in its pluralism’; it is at ease with contrasting definitions of knowledge. [2.5.4, 3C] Since Ziman (2000, p. 209) confronts us with the antithesis between explanatory unification and pragmatic finalisation, I shortly revisit the term finalisation. Finalisation in science is a theoretical model of science production devised by Böhmeet al. (1973) that goes somewhat beyond but also against the theories of Kuhn and Lakatos. Being a general model for all scientific development, like the theory of Kuhn, the model of finalisation is trying to accomplish explanatory unification and certainly not situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988).84 Applying the model to case studies, however, Böhmeet al. (1983) find that there is only convincing evidence for some cases within the field of physics (Radder, 2019, p. 29). Luckily for us, string theory is part of this field. The model is a chronologic structure distinguishing three stages. After an initial phase of exploratory research, in which science does not yet follow any method or established theory, comes a phase which is similar to what Kuhn designates: ‘the emergence of a paradigm’ and Lakatos: ‘the progressing of a research programme’ (Böhme et al., 1976, p. 314). In this paradigmatic phase ‘the theoretical problems demarcate a clear-cut frontier of science to which scientists are committed’ and at this point it is still ‘impossible to differentiate knowledge in terms of the purpose it is intended to serve’ (Böhme et al., 1976, p. 315). Then, in the third phase a paradigm has reached maturity: ‘... a stable and universal paradigm [is] set up for a particular research area’, whereafter the post-paradigmatic phase of finalisation commences. A kind of science, not far from Kuh- nian normal science, that ‘attempts to exploit the existing framework to the full’ and thereby sacrifices the aim: ‘to advance beyond the paradigm’s basic propositions’ (Böhmeet al., 1983, p. 24). In finalisation the autonomy of a scientific community is not guaran-

84‘[Finalisation] entails a belief in the possibility of a universally valid model of scientiﬁc development. As such, it cannot do justice to the diversity and richness of the actual development of the (technological) sciences.’ (Radder, 2019, p. 30)

62 teed. On the contrary, theoretical developments are steered by social factors primarily. To be sure, in paradigmatic science the gaps of knowledge within the paradigm are still evident because the theoretical framework of the paradigm is at this stage clearly incomplete. Thus, during the paradigmatic phase research problems are selected or rejected with the objective (‘mission’) to overcome incompleteness of the paradigm. In the finalisation phase the mission fades: now the multitude of problems that arise are selected and produced by social, external processes. Or, as summarised by Böhmeet al. (1976, p. 307): “Finalisation’ is a process through which external goals for science become the guideline of the development of scientific theory itself’.85 The theories of Ziman (2000), Böhmeet al. (1973), Kuhn (1962) and the peculiarities of present-day string theory as a branch of science bridge over 60 years, therefore answering the question: ‘is string theory a finalised science?’ begs for some temporal translation. Cru- cially, the content of the terms technology and applied science have changed significantly over the last forty years in the realm of physics and mathematics. The examples offered by Böhmeet al. (1983), supporting their theory, are historical examples only up to the 1980s. Together with industry, technology has changed since then. The west has moved to a post-fordist economy with a large services sector. And coincidentally the economy has become more financialised, i.e. income and profits in the West as relative share of the economy have increasingly moved to the financial sector, to the disadvantage of manufacturing (technology).86 Although the services and financial sectors have been growing at a comparable rate when it comes to revenue, most profits have flown to the financial sector (Krippner, 2005; Tori and Onaran, 2018).87 With a relatively stable share of

85In Ziman’s (2000) words, finalisation is ‘a phase where there is a reliable background of general understanding to guide research strategically towards envisaged and desired ends’ (p. 73). 86The financial economy extends beyond enterprises in the financial sector. Notably the auto industry, the old emblem of manufacturing, has moved towards financial business models. ‘From the 1980s onwards reports have periodically surfaced suggesting that many large non-financial corporations were making more money out of their financial operations than they were out of making things. This was particularly true in the auto industry. These corporations were now run by accountants rather than by engineers and their financial divisions dealing in loans to consumers were highly profitable. ... Enron was supposed to be about making and distributing energy but it increasingly merely traded in energy futures and when it went bankrupt in 2002 it was shown to be nothing but a derivatives trading company that had been caught out in high-risk markets.’ (Harvey, 2010, pp. 23-4) Indeed, even the university: ‘Of the 201 employees working at the Maagdenhuis, the headquarters of the UvA [University of Amsterdam], eight are working in Strategy and Information, 13 in Finance and Control and no less than 21 (!) in Real Estate Management, making it the largest unit of all. In contrast, Academic Affairs fields only seven employees.’ (Engelen et al., 2014, p. 1086) 87Krippner (2005, pp. 197-98) shows that American manufacturing counted for approximately one third of GDP in 1960 and only fifteen per cent in 2001 whilst finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) increased its share from fifteen to 24 per cent in the

63 employment but a sharp increase in both revenue and profits in the financial sector—in the West—it is natural to expect ample technical ‘innovation’ in this sector as the manufacturing sector has a relatively smaller budget to spend on engineering talent.88 As indicated by e.g. Bamford and MacKenzie (2018); Harvey (2010) and Coombs and van der Heide (2020) this indeed seems to be the case. They describe the basics of technical investments instruments referred to as derivatives, which are part and parcel of ‘financial innovation’ and before mentioned hedge funds (denoting investment funds specu- lating on derivatives) [4.2]. Although hardly existent prior to 1973 derivatives grew quick in number and value since. At the end of 2018 the cumulative worth of derivatives was valued at 735 trillion euros (e 735 · 1012) in the European market alone [!] (ESMA, 2019).89 The financialisation of the economy and the rise of financial technology that took place over the last forty years may obscure the ef- ficacy of the finalisation model—devised in an economy resembling a Fordist economy—in the present-day context, even within the field of physics. In my opinion, there is little objective to interpreting the application of string-theory-related-mathematics to financial riddles as, although in appearance distinct, just like examples explained by Böhmeet al. (1983) as application of science outside its own realm. In other words, with quantitative analysis there exists to some extend a societal force that lives of the fruits of, and is involved in, advanced applied mathematics; like aircraft design depended on fluid mechanics. The existence (or at least a thinkable application for science) of a field of application is of course a prerequisite, but hardly evidence for the finalisation of string physics. Just as the use of mathematics in engineering does not mean every nor any part of mathematics must by finalised. The following perspectives should provide some clarity same time frame. turning to profits, manufacturing and FIRE change position: between 1960 and 2001 FIRE increases its share of profits from less than twenty to 45 per cent whilst manufacturing plunges from over 40 to ten per cent. More recent data from the UK shows no slowing of this trend (Tori and Onaran, 2018). In the west, coincidentally, private capital (as share of the national income) has risen and shifted from public towards private, economic inequality is at a historic height (especially but not exclusively in the US), whilst public capital has been stable (UK and France) or declining (USA); i.e. (private) capital has become a stronger force relative to public capital whilst getting more concentrated to a smaller share of the population (see figures: I.1, 3.5, 3.6 and 4.6 in Piketty, 2014). 88From the American Institute of Physics report: ‘Common Careers of Physicists in the Private Sector’, we learn that finance as a sector offers the highest pay for American physics PhDs, typically twenty per cent higher than salaries in engineering jobs (Czujko and Anderson, 2015, p. 10). 89‘The EU derivatives market at the end of 2018 had EUR 735tn in total notional amount outstanding in 66mn open trades’ (ESMA, 2019, p. 4). Although, due to the complexity of their nature, this value does not have any transparent meaning nor straightforward interpretation. But as the sum of this contractual capital grew ten per cent in the year 2018 and is close to ten times 2018 global GDP it does indicate scale; the same scale argument holds for the mammoth ‘66 [million] open trades’. See also the summary of technical financial innovations by Harvey (2010, p. 262).

64 regarding specifically the claim of string theory being a finalised science. From there I aim to illuminate whether string theory can be classified as a science that is ‘post-modern in its pluralism’ ... at ease with contrasting definitions of knowledge.

String theory as a finalised science In one perspective string theory is part of a long research programme trying to achieve explanatory unification in the field of particle physics that bore the names: quantum theory, quantum field theory and now quantum gravity. The core of this research program is the sum of relativity, field theory and quantum physics. The first phase of Böhme et al.’s (1973) model in this program must be the conception of special relativity and early quantum mechanics. This pre-paradigmatic phase transitions into paradigmatic science with general relativity and the hegemony of the Copenhagen interpretation. The exact moments when the first and second phase start and end are not of great importance for this discussion (the validity of claiming that relativity and quantum mechanics form the basis of a coherent research programme fostering unification is, of course). With Schweber (1986, pp. 97-8) I argue that the conception of quantum field theory is in essence paradigmatic science. Its conception did not involve ‘revolutionary steps’ like its predecessors [3.1.1], but rather worked out the implications of quantum theory and special relativity. The two revolutionary theories form the outline of the QFT paradigm and, due to the hard work of e.g. Schwinger and Feynman, their mutual connections were sought and found. Moving towards quantum gravity, something worth noting occurs: closure. Part of the reason why the finalisation model is not easy to apply outside physics is because in the demarcation between the pragmatic phase and the finalisation phase Böhmeet al. (1983, pp. 133 ff.) lend Heisenberg’s notion of closure. A theory is closed when at least it has no internal contradictions, it appropriately describes a specific field of experience and it is proven for some instances and suspected to hold for all phenomena in this field of experience (Radder, 2019, p. 26).90 In physics, the criterium of closure has a relatively clear meaning. Newtonian mechanics is Heisenbergs exemplary case for a closed theory (Heisenberg, 1948). But in aiming to create a theory that is generally applicable Böhmeet al. (1983) do not use the stringent criterium of closure to mark the end of the pragmatic phase but

90Nordmann (2010, p. 220) adds more detail: A closed theory is closed with respect to: ‘1. Their historical development has come to an end, they are finished or have reached their final form. 2. They constitute a hermetically closed domain in that the theory defines conditions of applicability such that the theory will be true wherever its concepts can be applied. 3. They are immune to criticism; problems that arise in contexts of application are deflected to auxiliary theories and hypotheses or to the specifics of the set-up, the instrumentation, and so on. 4. They are forever valid: wherever and whenever experience can be described with the concepts of such a theory, the laws postulated by this theory will be proven correct.’

65 the more supple notion of ‘theoretical maturity’.91 Since as far as known, to great precision, all historic measurements in the realm of subatomic physics agree with the standard model or general relativity, both theories (and therefore the research program) make a case for describing all relevant phenomena in the field. Further, they are mathematically constructed without contradictions. I.e. they alone as theories and together as a programme make a good case to be closed and more so ‘mature’. Heisenberg (1948) wrote in 1948 that within physics, among other, ‘Quanten- mechanik mit Atomphysik und Chemie’ and ‘Maxwell’sche Theorie mit der speziellen Relativitätstheorie’ can be considered closed theories. The first of these, together with field theory is the basis of what we have come to call the standard model. The latter is the basis for general relativity. Also, as Rickles (2014) notes, like QFT the string theory program lacks revolutions worth the name ‘revolution’ [A]. Taken together, the advent of closure on the entire domain of natural phenomena (measurable) spanned by string physics before its conception and the lack of revolution could indicate that string theory fits best in the final phase of the finalisation model, but this argument is far from conclusive and rather formal. Also it lacks any discussion on the key dominance of external goals in finalised science. External goals have had a significant influence before the advent of string physics in the quantum field theory programme. As is evident from the works of among other Schweber (1986), Forman (1987) and Kaiser (2002), first the Second World War and later the military- industrial complex had severe influence on the course of quantum physics and especially quantum field theory in the USA. Influence ranging from the organisation of university departments to the style of education to research priorities and ontology [3.1.1]. Although the physics community maintained the pretence of delivering autonomous science, it had at some point in the 1950s ‘lost control’; they suffered from a false conscience.92 What of significance does this teach us for our discussion on finalisation and string theory? Noth- ing more than the existence of a well studied historical example of the inability to resist extra-academic pressure, especially in the form of funding, in the same research programme. These ‘attempts to exploit the existing framework to the full’ come with a reluctance of the community to reflect on its own societal place using the guise of ‘pure science’.

91Theoretical maturity is reached when theories ‘possess a substantial measure of com- prehensiveness and stability.’ (Radder, 2019, p. 26) 92Writing of the American physicists of the 1950s, Forman (1987) concludes: ‘Though they have maintained the illusion of autonomy with pertinacity, the physicists had lost control of their discipline. They were now far more used by than using American society, far more exploited by than exploiting the new forms and terms of their social integration.’ This bending to power (and funds) instead of reason is according to George Orwell (1968) almost an aspect of those who practice the ‘hard sciences’.

66 From a finalised science to stringtechnoscience Moving from the historic to the contemporary we have less literature to build upon. An interesting analysis comes from the hand of Peter Galison [3.2]. His thesis is that the increasingly common stance of the string theorist towards ontology in the twenty-first century is not one trying to find the ‘final source’ of knowledge through further unification like was common in particle physics the 1980s [3.2] (Weinberg, 1987, p. 437), neither the non-hierarchical ontology of the scientists who are captivated by a world that exhibits fundamental behaviour at any scale such as Ernst Mayr’s and Philip Anderson’s [3.2] (Anderson, 1972). Rather, the common stance is one of anontology 93 that shows little interest for uncovering the deep laws of nature—hierarchical or autonomous. This new generation of theorists focus ‘on novel effects, materials, and objects, but constructed through an engineering way of being that values the making and linking of structures ...’ (Galison, 2017, p. 25). The ontology of hierarchy, of unification, is like a ‘pyramid’ sturdily build out of deeply connected sciences. Non-hierarchical ontology and its advocates counter that fundamental behaviour is not exclusive to the sciences working on fundamental constituents, but exists at any scale can be likened to a ‘quilt with weak stitching’. String theory, then, says Galison (2017) comes from a culture of the pyramid, but without the urge to unification the pyramid keeps the strong connection but loses its core. What is left is a ring: strongly connected sciences without hierarchy to guide to a centre, i.e. there is no centre, just linkages. Galison’s idea of a research programme featuring an anontology (‘an engineering way of being within the sciences’, the ring) is cat- egorised by Nordmann (2010) not as a novel idea but as technoscience. Research that is not exactly science, although it needs scientific skill and understanding. Research that is neither technology, because it is not aimed directly at the production of appliances. In- deed, technoscience and its body of knowledge may be the ideal concept for describing string theory. Latour (1987) defines technoscience as neither the product of solely scientists, engineers nor extra- scientific societal forces. Accepting the very large number of actors in the creation of science he proposes to do away with the distinction of what belongs to pure science and what not, the identification of what creates science and technology in general. All research today is technoscience, and with an open mind we should approach all links in the complex network that makes technoscience.94 For Nordmann (2010), exploring nanotechnoscience also starts

93A neologism constructed for this case by Galison (2017, p. 18): ‘the anontological: an indiﬀerence to the ontological’. 94Latour (1987, p. 175) writes: ‘From now on, the name of the game will be to leave the boundaries [of what technoscience is] open and to close them only when the people we follow close them.’

67 with Heisenbergs closed theories.95 Nanotechnoscience is inherently different to string technoscience in that it is mainly done in the lab, working with empirical data. But it resembles string theory in that it works with a number of closed theories in a realm where these have not been applied afore. Nano science draws from a number of closed theories in the classic and quantum realms. He writes: Everything is thought to be possible at the nanoscale that is not ruled out by those closed theories or the known laws of nature. This, however, forces upon us a notion of technical possibility that is hardly more substantial than that of logical possibility. (Nordmann, 2010, p. 225) Exchanging nanotechnoscience in this quote for string technoscience and the nanoscale for the string scale seems quite apt. Compacti- fied dimensions, strings, branes and CFT’s are quite exotic objects, but they are not ruled out by closed theories (standard model and gravity). And indeed, with our technical apparatus we might have produced a string technoscience that is general to the extend that it can envision any universe (the ‘technical’, now should be read as mathematical, ‘making and linking of structures’, possibilities of string technoscience seem endless). Nordmann continues: However, failure to develop an understanding also of limits of understanding and control at the nanoscale has tre- mendous cost as it misdirects expectations, public debate and possibly also research funding. (Nordmann, 2010, p. 225) There is certainly little control at the the string scale, but this is not searched for at the string scale and here the analogy does not hold. However, limits of understanding in string technoscience are indeed little understood and result in a debate full of controversy (Dar- dashti et al., 2019). And as in nanotechnoscience, this is a direct consequence of working outside the tested/working domain of closed theories. This point is, I believe, actually quite deep. It should be expected that a branch of academia only concerned with theory building like string research is hard pressed without a solid theoretical framework on a manageable timescale. But a part of string theory—for the same reason of being outside the realm of closed theories, in the realm of technoscience like nanotechnoscience—seems to be able to progress steadily (get funded and interest from researchers) without the need or ongoing search for a solid theory. But where nanotechnoscience naturally deals and operates mainly outside creation of deep theories of nature96, string technoscience has followed not long ago outside the ontological, into the ‘engineering way’ or the anontological. 95Nordmann (2010, p. 220) shortly visits the theory of finalisation as he refers to it as ‘one of the first systematic accounts of technoscience’. 96Nordmann (2010, p. 220): ‘the consensus appears to be that the development of nanotechnologies can do without [the construction of theories of its own]’

68 Instead of staying with Böhmeet al. (1973) and finalisation for understanding string theory, it is perhaps more congruent to compare what Nordmann (2010) and Galison (2017) state to Ziman’s (2000): ‘post-academic science is post-modern in its pluralism’; it is at ease with contrasting definitions of knowledge. Indeed, the closure of the theories that string technoscience builds on enables a plurality of non- false options (the landscape [A]) that exceeds the norm of modern physics, is beyond the physics of modernity. But we can shun the lack of specificity of the term: post-modernism, and stay instead with little more distinct string technoscience (to be sure: less specific than finalisation, but a better fit). What then, does the specification of string theory as string technoscience really teach us? Apart from being able to learn from con- necting with the large body of knowledge that has been build around technoscience we can, with Latour (1987), use this perspective steer technoscience (social by definition)97 actively in a direction which is desired by both its practitioners, the scientific community and society at large—this involves formulating a normative framework, which is by no means simple. Following all actors, we may uncover why and to what degree string technoscience moved/moves to being a science that goes the ‘engineering way’.98 To close the circle: the ideas of Galison (2017) and Nordmann (2010) fit with, but go further than, the ‘blurring’ of epistemology in Ziman’s (2000) post-academic science: where a ‘polluted’ mix related to the interpenetration of what used to be academic and industrial science, leads increasingly to insecurity on the general epistemological value of science. It is when researchers share data, practices, theories and ideas with several distinct research communities that epistemology gets blurred such that post-academic science misses clarity on what the general base of accepted knowledge is. [2.5.4, 3D] Last, when Galison refers to an ‘engineering way of being with the science’ in string technoscience, he refers to a part of string research that is especially manifest in what is sometimes called ‘applied string theory’ (Galison, 2017, p. 23-24). The work by theorists that focusses not on the fundamental character of strings, branes etcetera, but on applying its main mathematical fruit: AdS/CFT correspond-

97Following Latour’s notion of technoscience does not mean adherence to complete social constructivism or relativism. I follow Büscherand Fletcher (2020, pp. 138 ff.). In a section titled: ‘Reality is constructed, but this does not mean that ‘everything is relative” they carefully explain their stance from which they conclude: ’natural scientists should start acknowledging and dealing with the fact that reality is always constructed, while social scientists should start dealing with the fact that reality is not only constructed’. They note a recent and significant shift in ideas by some noted members of the ‘social con- structivist camp’ (notably Haraway (2016) and Latour (2017) himself) regarding realism in the face of the developing climate crisis. 98One of these actors is the financial industry, one is recent quantum field theory history (featuring its own section in a recent work on technoscience (Channell, 2017, pp. 175 ff.)) and its geography, shaping its present-day culture. But those are only two of many, some more, some less influential.

69 Web of Science topic ”string theory” ”AdS/CFT” (¬ ”AdS/CFT”) (¬ ”string theory”) Total number of papers 405 477 Funded by foundations∗ 27 88 related to hedge funds 7.7 % 18.4 % Number of papers with 65 61 no declared funding agency

Table 3: Cumulatively, in the year 2019, ∗ the Simons, Wallenberg and Templeton foundations together (co-)funded significantly more papers on the AdS/CFT conjecture (‘applied string theory’) compared to papers with on the topic of string theory (Clarivate Analytics, 2020, as of the 10th of april, 2020). The papers in this analysis on ”AdS/CFT” were chosen to exclude those papers on the topic ”string theory”, and for ”string theory” vice versa, i.e. the middle category (”string theory” and ”AdS/CFT”) in figure 1 is excluded. The vast majority of funding came from the Simons Foundation; the funding from the Simons Center at Stony Brook is not included. Selective industrial funding can have a further leverage effect on non-commercial spending in a field (Holman and Bruner, 2017).

ence or holography to a plurality of problems in a number of ﬁelds. From ﬁgure 1 it is clear that this ‘applied string theory’ is becoming an increasing part (∼ 50 per cent in 2019) of string research since the conception of holography around the start of the new millennium. Using, once more, the Web of Science analysis tool a picture emerges that the earlier mentioned hedge fund related foundations are most interested in applied string theory and thus in the promotion of string technoscience, as is shown in table 3; this is what ziman refers to as ‘epistemic pollution’ and it strengthens the technoscience claim.

4.4 Working in projects; is the variety of ideas within the string community hampered? ... In the post-academic world this extremely individual practice [academic research practice] is generally impossible. Instruments, facilities and broad expertise require (ﬁnancial) support and teamwork. In many countries a solution to this new setting is the introduction of projects and their proposals. [2.5.4, 4A] Project based research is increasing in share in the West since the 1980s. A historic landmark located right at this turning point is the implementation of New Public Management under Margret Tatcher in the UK.99 Although between European nations funding practice

99For a description of New Public Management see Ferlie et al. (2009). For its conception and eﬀects in the UK until 2009 see Ferlie and Andresani (2009). For an example of UK post-ﬁnancial-crisis higher-education literature in a broader historical context see Collini (2013).

70 and education policy has not changed in a uniform manner, a general trend in the West in the direction of NPM is clear. Germany, France and Italy, traditionally centres for theoretical physics, are relatively little affected. The United Kingdom, the USA and the Netherlands, featuring relatively active research in string theory, have conducted more fundamental research funding reforms.100,101 In my own faculty’s 2020 research budget (University of Amster- dam, Faculty of Science (UvA-FNWI)), competitive funding amounts to 39.3 million euros, or 33 per cent of the available total (e117 m.). It is expected to grow to 37 per cent in 2023. Most of the competitive funds are granted by the Dutch government through the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (49 %) and by the European Re- search Commission (29 %). The government additionally ‘matches’ competitive funds in 2020 with e17.3 m. to ‘assure qualitative standards’ (15% of the total UvA-FNWI research budget). The total 2020 funding determined by competition thus adds up to 48.1 per cent of total funding, this is the highest percentage of all faculties in the institution (UvA, 2019). Although these budgets cover the entire faculty, there is little reason to assume that the general trend (i.e. increasingly and to an already broad extend research is financed com- petitively) does not hold for string theory research conducted in this faculty. Perhaps, the more applied sciences, such as biomedicine, may have a higher relative share of funds through commercial benefactors (22 % of competitive funds). Note that the Dutch case is one more of national and European ordoliberal governance in plain sight: the deliberate creation of competition where it fails ‘natural’ presence [4.2]. Scientists are forced into competing with their peers, colleagues with whom they naturally and happily work together and with whom they generously share their results—think, for example, of the ‘core group of only around ten scientists who frequently visited each other per train across Europe’ in the booming European physics of the 30’s [2.3.4]. ... Proposals discourage risk-taking since peer review favours problems that are considered realistic within the community. Also,

100See especially the table: ‘External allocation of funds’, on page 257 to 258 of Para- deise et al. (2009), for Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands see also: (Whitley et al., 2018). More recent numbers can be found in van Steen (2012). For the US see e.g. Newﬁeld (2008); Slaughter and Rhoades (2000). Although literature is abundant, numbers on US funding are sparse. One local example featuring numbers is a history of funding at the University of California. Historically the University of California heavily reliant on state and federal support (70 to 80 per cent between 1950 and 1970) but this has steadily declined since (∼ 45 per cent in 1995). In 1985 the state still paid for 40 per cent of the universities expenditures, in 2014 this reduced to ten per cent. In 2014 the university relied for twenty per cent on project and contract based funding. (Douglass and Bleemer, 2018) 101Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland together co-produced ∼ 30 per cent of string theory and holography papers between 1975 and 2020; in the United Kingdom, the USA and the Netherlands the number of papers added up to ∼ 51 per cent of the total count. (Clarivate Analytics, 2020, WOS topics: “string theory” and “AdS/CFT”, on 28.4.2020)

71 projects facilitate opportunism as proposals for which technical skill, instruments and facilities are available are considered relatively important and feasible. ... This ‘professionalisation’ of the initial step of research provides in principle more systematic and qualitative research but reduces intellectual originality and unexpected results from daring projects. [2.5.4, 4B] In post-academic science, the natural selection process that is benefited by variation over time is hampered; scientists and their research are already steered through peer review in the trial stage by using a system that funds individual projects. [2.5.5, 4D] Although Ziman’s claim on inclination to realistic projects sounds probable it is not easy to prove fully. A little can be learned from European European grant applications by string theorists. The summaries of the last twelve years of successful ERC funded proposals on string theory originating from my department102 express in a general tendency to stress realism and especially the availability of technical skill. These quotes are taken from (ERC, 2020) grant applications, in all three cases these are the concluding lines of the project summaries. The other two proposals did not feature such direct references to availability of skill. My broad track record and expertise, and the fact that I have already obtained promising preliminary results, makes me uniquely qualified to lead this endeavour. (Jan de Boer, 2016, see: ERC 2020) The university of Amsterdam and the Netherlands provide an excellent environment for a successful completion of these goals. (Erik Verlinde, 2010, see: ERC 2020) Given my experience and track record, I am uniquely po- sitioned to attack this problem successfully. (Diego Hof- man, 2016, see: ERC 2020) Related, one study finds a present-day guise of the Matthew effect that Merton (1973, pp. 273–275, 439–59) could not yet have ima- gined in his time, when ‘[t]he substantive findings of science [were] a product of social collaboration and are assigned to the community’. Bol et al. (2018, p. 4887) show that for starting scientists in the Netherlands ‘early funding success introduces a growing rift, with winners just above the funding threshold accumulating more than twice as much research funding (e180,000) during the following eight years as non-winners just below it.’ They ‘find no evidence that winners’ improved funding chances in subsequent competitions are due to achievements enabled by the preceding grant, which suggests that

102A total of ﬁve projects receiving just over e9 m., worth more than e12 m. after ‘matching’. (UvA, 2019, p. 92)

72 early funding itself is an asset for acquiring later funding.’103 Other than peer review in research articles, grant proposals are not separated from the names of the authors before being scrutinised. This leads to in the ﬁrst place to the possibility of considering track record. As one author puts it: ‘Success in winning grants is cumulative; a track record of grant application success, in combination with a top publication record, can considerably boost chances of winning a grant.’ ’ (Kou, paragraph. 37-38) Thus, although track record leans on researcher’s quality to a certain degree, it also builds on, amongst other, luck and a researchers ability of writing proposals. As the ‘track record’ becomes a signiﬁcant force in the selection of a research because of the increasing allocation of funds through competitive grants, there is a partial shift from a competition of ideas to a competition of reputation which causes variation certainly and risk-taking probably to regress. But the extend of the impact, in general and in string theory, remains vague and complex.

4.5 A career in string theory Socially, the boundaries between an academic and an industrial career also fade. This can be seen from the drop in tenured positions, privatisation of research establishments and the rise of the fixed-term contract. And from the industrial side, the abolition of the industrial laboratory. [2.5.4, 5A] In part due to the pluralism of post-academic science, the quality of the individual scientist is assessed not only by peer review but also by inter-disciplinal metrics such as her citation index. [2.5.5, 5B] There is ample evidence of a general drop in tenured positions and rise of the fixed-term contract in academics (Ylijoki, 2010; Halff- man and Radder, 2015). ‘Tenure is under threat’ and ‘bothersome rankings and performance indicators are becoming common’ wrote David Harvey (1998) twenty-two years ago. In many places, students today are treated as consumers (Halffman and Radder, 2015; Fisher, 2009) and they and their superiors are monitored in reductionist metrics (Halffman and Radder, 2015; Engelen et al., 2014).104 But to map these influences accurately and geographically for string physics would demand a very specific set of data and is therefore beyond the scope of this thesis. But, since these alterations to research practice are on the whole due to government or university

103See also (Radder, 2019, p. 226): ‘A major problem of the current system of research funding, not only in the United States but worldwide, is the so-called “Matthew effect” ... A plausible consequence of this implicit mechanism is a decrease in the diversity of scientific approaches and practices, which goes against the explicit doctrines of promoting diversity.’ 104The impact of metrics in academia can be far-reaching: ‘Because jobs and the survival of entire departments depend on these indicators, everyone does their best to buff up the scores, if need be at the expense of content. Academics assist their colleagues with citations to increase their h-index and travel endlessly to conferences to surpass one another in visibility with slick PR presentations.’ (Halffman and Radder, 2015, p. 167).

73 ‘managerial’105 policies, they can be expected to vary geographically but exert a relatively equal influence in all disciplines within an institution. Thinking of the ‘abolition’ of the industrial laboratory and private research establishments Jim Simons Flatiron Institute comes to mind (although their research is less focussed on string theory). The Si- mons Foundation pays its full-time Flatiron researchers one and a half times their previous academic salary, it frees them from the task of grant applications and gives them flexibility to work on projects of their own interest. All these features make Flatiron remarkably similar to the big industrial-science labs of the early twentieth century (Ziman, 2000). And although Flatiron is a charitable organisation, it actually aims to be something closer to an industrial laboratory: ‘Simons hopes that the Flatiron Institute will have the expansively creative atmosphere of Bell Labs’. For the leader of the quantum- physics devision at Flatiron, Simons chose a leader in the field of computational superconductivity, in part because a breakthrough in superconductivity ‘would be worth trillions and trillions of dollars in applications’ thus ‘you could possibly crack that problem and probably make a lot of money for the foundation.’ (Max, 2017) What this really is, is a top-tier private research institute that does no costly teaching, is funded tax-free by dividends on an immense sum of money that was earned trough playing the stock market using graduates mastering the exact same expertise as that on which the charity focusses. Jim Simons is the final authority who decides what and who is or is not funded. In Flatiron, research is not ‘already steered through peer review in the trial stage’, but trough Simons personal taste. Flatiron is certainly a place where the boundaries between an academic and an industrial career fade.

105‘Institutions are measured against other institutions, researchers compete with one another for funds and universities for students. This leads to a permanent state of war between all the parties, destroying the social fabric of the university, but beneﬁting the occupier.’ Write Halﬀman and Radder (2015, pp. 165, 168), where the occupier is ‘the many-headed Wolf of management’.

74 5 Conclusion; post-academic science and complementary narratives

String physics is in many respects post-academic. This is not shock- ing since by its deﬁnition, if Ziman’s (2000) analysis is in tune with reality, post-academic science is the dominant research culture of our time. The next paragraphs repeat the main points of the last chapter. This summary should be read in its context as it presents recent developments in science culture too sharp. The relevance of this broad-brushstroke overview is its ability to relay not the extend but the direction in which string theory research has been moving and the similarity in direction with Ziman’s (2000) notion of post-academic science.

Communalism, in Ziman’s sense, is endangered. String physics’ communication structure preceded other fields in moving away from a formal academic archive. The archive that is empathically praised by Ziman for its key role in academic science. String physics is, together with the rest of theoretical physics, very advanced in its pre-print publishing structure; it is leading the pack. String theory is partly and increasingly proprietary. Large contributions to string theory, originating from wealthy individuals, are given a key role, both by the scientists and by the organisation of research funding, in deciding the direction of research. James Simons is right: ‘Taste in science is very important’. That is, in the current system the taste of these wealthy individuals and institutions matters disproportionally. For example, although there is roughly a 50-50 division in the number of papers on the topics of “string theory” and “AdS/CFT”, it is the latter that gets significantly more attention from capital-laden investors. String theorists are skilled technicians right out-of-school in, amongst other things, the field of finance. According to Ziman universalism is challenged by epistemic development (especially the use of formal, complex methods, language and machinery) and social developments (among other things, the growth of science). String theory’s methods are complex up to the point where one author states that it is ‘difficult to understand’ even for ‘many insiders’ (Rickles, 2014, p. p. viii-x). This is to a large extent due to the mathematics at play; string theory is right at the border of pure mathematics and theoretical physics. The leverage of mathematics as a tool over the field causes one prominent theorist to state: ‘Let us invent / tools that suit our problems / rather than / problems that suit our tools.’ (Veneziano, 1998, p. 189) The epistemic complexity of string theory can exist in a science culture that includes a very large number of scientists and that is divided into a large number of hyper-finely specialised research areas. The quasi-market relationships, that have become the norm in our neoliberal times, are a strong threat to the academic norm of

75 disinterestedness among scientists. With the advent and roll-out of project funding scientists lost, among other things, a great deal of their autonomy in problem choice; the rewarding institution can steer research for a (public) wealth objective. Although the capital- intensive faculties of science can be expected to be more dependent on project funding than some other departments (as is the case at my university (UvA, 2019)), this is a general trend over the entire stretch of academia. In authoritarian, post-academic science projects are tagged - however remote - with potential use which connects them to related private and public institutions with similar goals ( 4C). Is this the case even for exceedingly theoretical string theory research? I argue: for part of string theory. The foundations of string theory build upon quantum field theory that had a very clear societal use: first war equipment and later electronics. Resultantly, it produced—and suffered from—a culture typified by the phrase: ‘shut up and calculate’ (Mermin, 2004). Potential military use for theoretical physics was already clear from the first world war, of rapidly increasing importance in the second world war and of prime importance during the cold war. The fields that string theory grew out of are thus in part military. Currently, in times of peace in the West, with no stress on the need for a bigger bomb, the military interest receded somewhat; does this mean projects are not tagged with potential use anymore? Kaiser (2011) shows that a recession in funds can induce disinterested research, and I think that string theory is partly done by disinterested scientists, principally as a labour of love. But an increasing part of the string project, what Galison (2017) defines as ‘applied string theory’, aims to use string theory and string methods as ‘a toolbox’ for use in other sciences; this part of string physics research is tagged remotely but clearly. Note also the industry advisory council at my faculty—and probably its many equivalents elsewhere—, who are in essence installed to tag projects with potential future use. String theory research is increasingly commissioned through projects and tenure is on the decline. There is little reason to expect that string theory is less original than other fields in the physical sciences. The whole discipline, however, has to deal with the project-funding structure. The boundaries between industry and academia are also fading in string theory research, but perhaps less than in more applied fields. String theorists are experts, experts in esoteric mathematics (Venezi- ano, 1998) and experts (inevitably, as almost any successful scholar) in writing project proposals (Connor and Mauranen, 1999). String theorists can and do function as trained experts for the ever more important financial industry. Projects and their proposals, again, play an important role in the production of expert knowledge. As individual ideas have to be shaped to fit the pre-project peer-review, focus shifts from originality to more encompassing measures like track record, feasibility, the availability of skills and facilities etc. Expertise

76 stands in a diametric relation to scepticism.

The meta-narratives that have been touched upon in this thesis include: post-academic science, technoscience and (the even more generic) neoliberalism. Any generic theoretic lens that tries to understand string physics’ research practice has its limits. On the other hand, each of these narratives can locate string theory in a theoretic framework that not only links it to current developments in physics and bordering disciplines, but also to societal change outside academia. One might ask, is there, in the first place, a need for critique on string physics? If string theory is as harmless as Cambridge mathematicians like to think of pure mathematics, who exclaim in a slightly outdated toast: ‘Here’s to Pure Mathematics: may it never be of any use to anyone!’ If string theory research were of no use to anyone, only existing for the sake of understanding our origins or for hunting beauty, a labour of love, there would be little to gain from this analysis of its sociological mechanisms and historical origins. But string physics is advanced applied mathematics which, as we have learned, is in turn the basis for at least one stupendous accumulation machine in times of financialised capitalism (Renaissance Technologies, see section 4.2). Moreover, its method sparks controversy: some say it’s the only plausible way forward while others fear it’s the demise of the scientific method. In addition, it builds on an entangled relationship of war-industry and ‘pure’ physics that begs for introspection.106 In my view we need meta-narratives to form normative judge- ments going forward. Especially when there is no empiric evidence in sight. And especially when string theorists themselves are proposing arguably normative theory evaluation. What I mean is, we should aim to answer—apart from the equally important questions on the topic of empiricism—the following questions: is string theory, in a holistic sense, as beautiful as its sheer mathematical or conceptual beauty? Or, is it a little less pleasing to the eye than we might presume from the immersed perspective of the physicists? Or, is it, perhaps most likely, a complex hybrid of these or a sum of mixed emotions varying over people and cultures—as beauty is in the eye of its beholder. Formulating normative criteria will not be easy and far beyond the scope of this thesis. It is, however, in my view not enough to stop at the historically formed border of the discipline or field; i.e., trying to understand string theory also as an actor in society and its broader environment is vital for normative judgement. Moreover, I do not mean to downplay string technoscience’s mathematical strength or beauty, my plea is only to include its societal aspects in its evaluation—as also its impact reaches beyond the hard-to-contain realm of ‘pure’ science. The Merton-inspired ‘row of pegs on which to hang a naturalistic account of some of the social and psychological features of

106A history that is not generally taught in physics undergraduate or graduate programs.

77 academic science’ that Ziman (2000, p. 32) uses for describing academic and, to some extent, post-academic science seems to be an eﬀective tool that spans a broad range of recent sociological developments in the sciences and in string physics. But, to gain additional insight, I propose to also use the inter-linked narratives of: technoscience, neoliberalism in the form of New Public Management and the narrative of entering the ﬁnancialisation phase of capitalism. These narratives can perhaps make us better understand the impact of current societal developments on string physics research, and vice versa. And—into the bargain—, as newtonian physics was ahead of the pack in formulating the empirical academic research culture, this inquiry into arguably the most theoretical physics frontier of our time may provide additional insight in the general research culture of our times. Again, these meta-narratives only reveal some characteristics of string theory research, they do not, for example, deny the mathematical beauty string theory possesses nor the possibly pure motives of its practitioners or its benefactors. They seem to apply primarily to what Galison (2017) refers to as ‘applied string theory’; this part, however, can hardly be seen as disconnected from its other parts.

Neoliberalism and New Public Management Project-based funding is such a central part of Ziman’s (2000) analysis, at least when considered in unison with string theory research, that it deserves more attention. The evolution of funding towards the quasi-market system of projects—with supply and demand—features in Ziman (2000) as a reason that science is becoming authoritarian, commissioned and expert. But project-based funding is only one guise of a more central discourse: neoliberalism. Projects and their proposals comprise a structure for allocation of funds that threatens Ziman’s (2000) disinterestedness, originality and scepticism. As Ziman and the Science Policy Support Group (1991) also recognise, quasi-market structures stretch beyond project-style funding. Take, for example, the hedge-funds supporting string theory through a structure of philanthrocapitalism.107 A form of re-distribution of capital that enjoys favourable reception in general, at least since the coinage of the term at the start of the 21st century. But nevertheless a contested notion with an ‘oxymoronic’ character: ‘Fewer phenomena seem more divorced than philanthropy and capitalism, the former a realm of ‘pure’ altruism and the latter a realm of ‘pure’ proﬁt maximisation.’ (McGoey, 2012, p. 186) Philanthrocapitalism is, indeed, one more inherently neoliberal phenomenon at play in string theory. It is a market-based solution to a previously social endeavour: the funding ‘pure’ science for knowledge sake. I would argue that even the pressure for increased speed in aca-

107Philanthrocapitalism is ‘the tendency for a new breed of donors to conflate business aims with charitable endeavours, making philanthropy more cost-effective, impact- oriented, and financially profitable.’ (McGoey, 2012, p. 185)

78 demic communication is entangled with New Public Management. If universities are run like for-proﬁt enterprises with elaborate management structures and ‘inner market functions’ (Engelen et al., 2014, p. 1081), and if researchers have to compete for funds amongst each other, speedy communication becomes—as in most, if not all markets—to a certain extent more of a valuable asset.

Technoscience String theory builds on closed theories outside their realm of empirical confirmation. This is not an isolated phenomenon for string theory. It plays an important part in the theory of finalisation (Böhmeet al., 1973) and is an indicator that at least part of string theory should be marked as technoscience. This observation by Galison (2017) and Nordmann et al. (2011) (that part of string theory is technoscience) is highly valuable for normative judgement. What are the implications of understanding a discipline as pure science or as technoscience? The implications of the two are different and pose, among other things, questions of ethics. What is the public value of the technology it supports? Who should pay for its proceedings? And, should public funds and institutions reserved for adressing fundamental questions (‘basic science’) be used for string technoscience?108 What is basic science in the natural sciences when this theoretical frontier of physics is not, or not fully, basic? The technoscience frame links string theory to e.g. work of Paul Forman (2007), who refers to Latour (1987) as he investigates how it is possible that, in common though, the primacy that existed between science and technology was reversed in the 20th century; a process intimately related to the term technoscience. Possibly, he mentions, ‘the origins of a reversal of primacy between science and technology lie in the second world war’. Bringing us back to string theory’s prehistory. Indeed, the entanglement of string physics and technoscience is observed on two levels. In its prehistory: Schweber (1986) and Forman’s (1987) early work on the prehistory of string theory; a period that has its own section in Channell’s (2017) ‘History of Technoscience’. And on the level of method and epistemology, i.e. the discussed line of thought of Galison (2017) and Nordmann et al. (2011).

Financialisation For the advent of technoscience there has to be a technical realm, noticed or unnoticed, that overlaps with a scientific realm. The study of finalisation by Böhmeet al. (1983), an early effort in the study of technoscience, looked at the technical realm of its time: agricultural

108At least according to Radder (2019, p. 219) there is a case to value ‘basic science’ over ‘application-oriented sciences’ : ‘... insofar as science is useful for the purpose of anticipating future complexity and uncertainty, it is basic science rather than the much more speciﬁc application-oriented sciences.’

79 chemistry, fluid mechanics and cancer research. For string technoscience the corresponding technical realm is at least technology related to the financial economy, a field of technology that emerged only quite recently. Financial technology and products were simple, they even hardly existed until a number of events in the 1970s including the opening of the first futures exchange in 1973 (Bamford and MacKenzie, 2018, p. 107) and the rapidly expanding importance of financial valuation practices in other domains.109 Since then the financial sector has been taking an increasing share of all profits to become the most profitable in the US (Krippner, 2005; Foster and McChesney, 2017, chart 1.3) and the UK (Hofman and Aalbers, 2019) whilst employing an almost constant number of people. This, among other things, leads to rising inequality: ‘If, in the “golden age” of monopoly capitalism from 1950–1973, the disparity in per capita GDP between the richest and poorest regions of the world decreased from 15:1 to 13:1, in the era of monopoly-finance capital this trend was reversed, with the gap growing again to 19:1 by century’s close.’ (Foster and McChesney, 2017, p. 73) James Simons “earned” 1.6 billion US$ in 2018 and 2.8 billion US$ in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis.110 These staggering numbers relate to tangible developments; David Harvey (2010, p. 245) thinks that: The credit system has now become, however, the major modern lever for the extraction of wealth by finance capital from the rest of the population. ... The wave of financialisation that occurred after the mid-1970s has been spectacular for its predatory style. Stock promotions and market manipulations; Ponzi schemes and corporate fraud; asset stripping through mergers and acquisitions; the promotion of levels of debt incumbency that reduce whole populations, even in the advanced capitalist countries, to debt peonage; dispossession of assets (the raiding of pension funds and their decimation by stock and corporate collapses) – all these features are central to what contemporary capitalism is about. The global ‘triumph of financial capital’ (Sweezy, 1994) over the last forty years or so has a big impact on the nature of technology. Although the process of financialisation is interesting in itself, for this analysis it is key to recognise especially the stupendous speed and size

109Coombs and van der Heide (2020, p. 5) write: ‘Chiapello argues that the spread of economising quantiﬁcations generally takes the form of ﬁnancialized valuation practices which have ‘colonized’ domains as varied as investment valuation, accounting standards, and banking supervision.’ Referring to Chiapello (2015). 110See: https://www.forbes.com/2009/04/08/wall-street-highest-earners -business-wall-street-earnings_slide.html#76b50e56f70a, accessed 21.07.2020. The article does not fail to mention that Simons is ‘one of the nation’s foremost philanthropists’.

80 of the economic shift. Financialisation quickly created a large and expending realm of technology that happens to be based on the same methods as those supporting advanced applied mathematics, and advanced applied mathematics includes string theory research. Thus, ﬁnancialisation paved part of the way for a string technoscience; or, rather, they mutually enhance each other.

81 A A brief technical history of the development of string theory

The history of the synthesis of string theory may be outlined by four development phases (I follow Rickles, 2014, pp. 5-7). These I treat brieﬂy.

1968-1973 The first phase began in 1968 with the discovery of the Veneziano amplitude and the related N-point dual resonance model. In 1968 the standard model in particle physics was still in a rudimentary state; quantum chromo dynamics (QCD) had yet to be developed and the combining of the electromagnetic and the weak force into what became the electro-weak sector of the standard model had not yet taken place. The effort that eventually led to string theory, the N- point dual resonance model, was not directed at anything like string theory. It was an unsuccessful attempt at trying to find a model for the in 1968 still poorly understood strong force (see figure 5). Soon, however, it was realised that the model mimics an infinite set of har- monic oscillators and thus has a string-like interpretation. But this interpretation was initially thought to be of no physical significance. Before 1970 the dual model was studied using Feynman diagrams, revealing its topological nature. An initial problem of the theory was the occurrence of a Tachyon, a particle with negative mass-squared, thus traveling at superluminal speed. The existence of such a particle breaks causality and is thus considered unphysical. After 1970 a dual resonance model action is constructed. The critical dimension (the dimension for which the theory is consistent) for bosonic (integer spin) dual resonance theory is found to be 26. The later inclusion of fermionic particles (now known as supersymmetric string theory or superstring theory) reduces the critical dimension from 26 to ten dimensions and eradicates part of the tachyon problem. The tachyon problem was, however, not eliminated completely until a better understanding of supersymmetry was achieved.

82 Figure 5: Veneziano indicates the historical progression of high energy theories using a hotel-star like system. The diagram shows the underdeveloped state in 1967 (and ’68) and the rapid growth thereafter. (Veneziano, 2008, p. 18)

1974–1983 Until 1974 the theory describing strings focussed on hadrons (particles which feel the strong force) under the title of the dual resonance model. But when quantum chromodynamics became the favoured hadronic theory, around 1974, the focus changed radically. The new string theory that suddenly became the topic of interest operates in the the Scherck limit of small strings111, a twenty orders of magnitude rescaling from the earlier dual resonance model that operated at typ- −13 ical string lengths of ls ≈ 10 . At this minute scale a string-like particle can be constructed that transforms covariantly as demanded for gravitons in general relativity; a theoretical adaption from trying to understand the strong force towards illuminating quantum gravity. Rickles (2014, p. 134) nominates the string theory/dual resonance model energy rescaling for ‘the most extraordinary case of ‘theoretical exaptation’ in the history of physics’. In 1977 supersymmetric theory is projected from a ﬂat metric to curved spacetime (GSO projection). This embedding in spacetime fully eliminates the tachyon problem in superstring theory, resulting in a consistent theory. In the late seventies, various other approaches towards understanding supergravity were on the rise outside of string theory, which sometimes led to fruitful cross-fertilisation (Rickles, 2014, pp. 148-151).

111 0 2 1 Infinite string tension as α := ls → 0, α0 ≈ T → ∞ leads to strings at the Planck scale, the scale on which quantum-gravitational effects are influential (Rickles, 2014; Freund et al., 1984).

83 1984–1994 In the years following 1984 a number of the most cited physics papers were related to string theory. At least three influential papers helped to further string theory and opened up the field for the ‘superstring revolution’ that followed.112 These were: fruitful efforts in compactification on Calabi-Yau manifolds, resolving of a symmetry anomaly in type I string theory and the introduction of heterotic string theory.113 These improvements brought string theory a little closer to observed reality. It made theorists realise that string theory is capable of describing all standard model particles and interactions including gravity. Thus it received recognition as a candidate ‘theory of everything’. Curiously, this third phase consists primarily of the resolution of a set of mathematical problems whereas the two previous phases are characterised by physical advancements. The succes of string theory in the years 1984-94 is apparent in figure 1, depicting the rapid manpower expansion in the string field.

1995- Around 1995 a ‘second string revolution’ is said to have taken place. This ‘revolution’ was the product of at least two vital advancements. The first advancement was the new importance ascribed to multidi- mensional strings or Dp(irichlet)-branes by Polchinski (1995). Branes had been conceived multiple times since 1980 but, until 1995, branes where not recognised as essential building blocks of string theory. The second was the identification of an eleven-dimensional supergravity as the low-energy limit of ten dimensional superstring theory (type II A). Edward Witten, after discovering the latter, soon found in collaboration with Joseph Polchinski and others that this eleven dimensional superstring theory is a dual to all prior ten-dimensional string theories either compactified on the proper manifold and/or by employing dualities interconnecting theories. Indeed, it turned out that all five superstring theories found prior to 1995 (type I, IIA, IIB, E8 × E8 heterotic and SO32 heterotic) and eleven dimensional su-

112Dean Rickles is not at ease with the usage of ‘revolution’ as is done in string theory. A revolution, he argues, should entail a certain discrete break. The string theory revolutions, however, are rather incremental advancements and sometimes mathematical solutions. He proposes the notion of a ‘high impact event’; an event that is related to a large number of citations (see: Rickles, 2014, p. 169, note 2). The remarkable coupling between a number of highly cited papers and the word ‘revolution’ might underline the importance of citations in present-day science; it may be of interest to take a look at ‘revolutions’ in scientific vocabulary, as Moretti and Pestre (2015) have done for governance at the world bank. It is also evidence for the thesis that physicists have stopped to look for ‘revolutionary departures’ [3.1.1]. 113Whilst compactification is essential in describing standard model particles and the graviton in a world that can resemble observation it breaks the uniqueness of string theory, enabling a multitude of stable solutions. The three influential papers are: Green and Schwarz (1984); Gross et al. (1985); Candelas et al. (1985).

84 pergravity are connected by a ‘web’ of connections; all six theories are expected to be limit cases of a deeper M-theory (Rickles, 2014, pp. 215-18). Even before the full appreciation of branes, string theory lost its uniqueness through compactifcation. With M-theory the number of solutions from distinct compactifications increases dramatically. An often quoted number estimates the amount of stable solutions (stable vacua) at ∼ 10500. All these vacua lead to different low- energy physics. This multiplicity of string vacua is dubbed the string landscape. The predicted number of seemingly equally good theories seems to be in dissonance with the single universe we are familiar with. Two remedies proposed to resolve this dissonance are (1) the need to find a yet uncovered physical principle that removes all but one solution or (2) the strong anthropic principle. (Cappelli and Colomo, 2008, p. 558–59) The valuation of D-branes gave new insights in the study of black holes. As it turns out, a certain stacking of D-branes has the characteristics of a type of black hole. Hawking and Bekenstein had, by combining the laws of thermodynamics and the physics on black hole horizons, already shown that black holes are thermodynamic objects with a certain entropy and a temperature later linked to the emit- tance of hawking radiation. In 1996 Strominger and Vafa used a stack of branes as a model for a specific extremal five dimensional black hole. If such a microphysical model is correct it should com- binatorically give the same entropy that was calculated by Hawking and Bekenstein statistically. Strominger and Vafa (1996) showed this for the extremal case and soon after Maldacena (1996) extended the result to the non extremal case, and calculated the predicted hawking radiation and black hole temperature. The implication of these results are profound for present day string theory. First, the agreement and direct link with classic theory gives confidence. And second, perhaps more important, because it caused Maldacena (1996) to propose the AdS/CFT conjecture, a conjectured gauge/gravity duality between conformal field theory and gravity in Anti de Sitter space (AdS). The duality, if proven, would imply that string theory has a dual description in quantum field theory that is well understood but was just never uncovered.114 In more detail, the conjecture states that the mechanics of a black hole have a dual description in conformal field theory which abides to the laws of quantum mechanics thus also unitarity. If Malcedena’s duality can be proven with higher certainty it would thus resolve Hawking’s black hole paradox (Hawking radiation would have a dual description in a unitary theory). But arguably more important than solving the black

114‘This entropy counting is neat, but the gauge/gravity duality is amazing, because it really says that gravity and string theory are not anything new; they’ve always been present in the framework of quantum ﬁeld theory or gauge theory, if we simply knew how to read the code, and Maldacena told us how to read the code.’ states Polchinski to Rickles (2009) in an interview.

85 hole information paradox is the machinery itself. AdS/CFT duality enables physicists to do mathematical operations in a CFT and in a string theory, where ever the calculation may be the easiest. Since Malcedena published his conjecture in 1997 the theory has set the course for current research as it has been the general focus (Rickles, 2014; De Haro et al., 2019).

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