----- Original Message ----- From: "Philip Hart" <philiph at SLAC.Stanford.EDU> On Wed, 29 Jan 2003 Gaertk at aol.com wrote: >> Calling something a "theory" when you have NO data to support >> it is, to me, presumptious and unscientific. >It may be presumptuous (in the eyes of God, say) but plenty of theorists >do it and damn it if they're not right sometimes. I don't know what you'd >have called The Theory of General Relativity before there was any data to >back it up, for example, or string theory, the main argument for which is >that the math is beautiful and it doesn't contradict any experimental >results or a variety of other theories (almost nothing anybody's come up >with has these features), even if it's not currently (i.e. anytime I can >imagine) verifiable. which leads me to mention the best non-fiction book i've read in a while: _the elegant universe_ by brian greene. all about string theory; very entertaining and informing to this layman. chris cunningham