Posthuman Blues

IS STRING THEORY FRAYING?

I do tend to be a little suspicious of the idea that String Theory MUST be true because it points a possible way to a Grand Unified Theory of Everything - and there MUST be a Grand Unified Theory of Everything - because that would be elegant.

In fact, there doesn't have to be a Grand Unified Theory of anything, and it's perfectly possible that the universe isn't ultimately reducible to a single simple formula. Maybe it is - but if it is, it's not because nature has a proclivity for neatness and symmetry. We want it to, but only because we're hard-wired to find harmony and patterns in everything. The universe isn't required to conform to our esthetic preference for elegance, and I think we should be deeply skeptical of any line of inquiry that begins with the assumption that an elegant solution is just waiting to be found.