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Mirror Symmetry and Other Miracles in Superstring Theory

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Abstract

The dominance of string theory in the research landscape of quantum gravity physics (despite any direct experimental evidence) can, I think, be justified in a variety of ways. Here I focus on an argument from mathematical fertility, broadly similar to Hilary Putnam’s ‘no miracles argument’ that, I argue, many string theorists in fact espouse in some form or other. String theory has generated many surprising, useful, and well-confirmed mathematical ‘predictions’—here I focus on mirror symmetry and the mirror theorem. These predictions were made on the basis of general physical principles entering into string theory. The success of the mathematical predictions are then seen as evidence for the framework that generated them. I shall attempt to defend this argument, but there are nonetheless some serious objections to be faced. These objections can only be evaded at a considerably high (philosophical) price.

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  1. Unit for HPS, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Dean Rickles

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Correspondence to Dean Rickles.

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For submission to a Foundations of Physics special issue on “Forty Years Of String Theory: Reflecting On the Foundations” (edited by G. ‘t Hooft, E. Verlinde, D. Dieks and S. de Haro).

I would like to thank audiences at the FQXi meeting in the Azores in 2009, and in Toronto, Oxford, Leeds, Utrecht, Bradford, and Sydney for useful discussions. Special thanks to Oswaldo Zapata for his many helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to acknowledge the Australian Research Council for financial support via discovery grant DP0984930.

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Rickles, D. Mirror Symmetry and Other Miracles in Superstring Theory. Found Phys 43, 54–80 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-010-9504-5

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