Related papers: String Theory and General Methodology; a Reciproca…

This article is based on a talk given at the ``Strings'97'' conference. It discusses the search for the universality class of confining strings. The key ingredients include the loop equations, the zigzag symmetry, the non-linear…

These are my personal impressions of the environment in which string theory was born, and what the important developments affecting my work were during the hadronic string era, 1968-1974. I discuss my motivations and concerns at the time,…

Assuming string theorists will not soon provide a compelling case for the primary theory underlying particle physics, the field will proceed as it has historically: with data stimulating and testing ideas. Ideally the soft supersymmetry…

Eternalism, the view that what we regard locally as being located in the past, the present and the future equally exists, is the best ontological account of temporal existence in line with special and general relativity. However, special…

Using a classical action associated to a point-particle in (1+1)-dimensions the classical string theory is derived. In connection with this result two aspects are clarified: First, the point particle in (1+1)-dimensions is not an ordinary…

We lay the groundwork for a formal framework that studies scientific theories and can serve as a unified foundation for the different theories within physics. We define a scientific theory as a set of verifiable statements, assertions that…

In these lectures we give a brief introduction to perturbative and non-perturbative string theory. The outline is the following: 1. Introduction to perturbative string theory 1.1 From point particle to extended objects 1.2 Free closed and…

String theory, if it describes nature, is probably strongly coupled. In light of recent developments in string duality, this means that the ``real world'' should correspond to a region of the classical moduli space which admits no weak…

This article briefly summarizes the motivations for -- and recent progress in -- searching for cosmological configurations within string theory, with a focus on how much we might reasonably hope to learn about fundamental physics from…

We examine recent claims of a large set of flux compactification solutions of string theory. We conclude that the arguments for AdS solutions are plausible. The analysis of meta-stable dS solutions inevitably leads to situations where long…

The main aim of this paper is to present an overview of the need of a new way of coping the fundamental equations of physics, see the references. Our main aim is to build a new metrics in which both time and space are included, but in some…

Ever since its birth, up until its present development, the major role of string theory involves being the best candidate for the theory of quantum gravity and other species of interactions. In the present work, we would like to accomplish…

The string tension does not have to be put in by hand, it can be dynamically generated, as in the case when we formulate string theory in the modified measure formalism, and other formulations as well. Then string tension appears, but as an…

In an effort to promote communication between the formal and phenomenological branches of the high-energy theory community, we provide a description of some important issues in supersymmetric and string phenomenology. We describe each…

The article discusses the demarcation problem; how to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. It then examines the string theory under various demarcation criteria to conclude that string theory cannot be considered as science.

String theory has transformed our understanding of geometry, topology and spacetime. Thus, for this special issue of Foundations of Physics commemorating "Forty Years of String Theory", it seems appropriate to step back and ask what we do…

In his The Road to Reality as well as in his Fashion, Faith and Fantasy, Roger Penrose criticises string theory and its practitioners from a variety of angles ranging from conceptual, technical, and methodological objections to sociological…

String cosmology aims at providing a reliable description of the very early Universe in the regime where standard-model physics is no longer appropriate, and where we can safely apply the basic ingredients of superstring models such as…

T-duality of string theory suggests nonlocality manifested as the shortest possible distance. As an alternative, we suggest a nonlocal formulation of string theory that breaks T-duality at the fundamental level and does not require the…

The early history of string theory is marked by a shift from strong interaction physics to quantum gravity. The first string models and associated theoretical framework were formulated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the context of the…