Strung Together: The Cultural Currency of String Theory as a Scientific Imaginary

Index

245 Index acceleration, 11, 54, 214, 218 action-at-a-distance, 224n30 adventure, 103, 140, 184 agency human, 41–43, 79–82, 86–87 material, 41–42, 81 agriculture, 23, 125, 143 “Ah! Sun-flower” (Blake), 232n36 algebra Lie, 141 tensor, 9, 11, 132, 214n11 allegory, 102–3, 229n3 allotropy, 122, 136, 156, 166, 182, 191 Alpert, Mark, 164–65 amplitude, Veneziano, 63, 213n3 analogy, garden hose, 151–52, 170 analytic philosophy, 219n9 Anatomy of Criticism (Frye), 101–7, 141–45 angular momentum, 12, 223 ansätz, 53–54, 61, 193, 221n25 anthropic principle, 20–21, 97, 193 anthropomorphism, 56, 80–82, 119–20, 123 anticommutation, 19, 217n46 antiquark, 74–75, 81–82, 106, 221n1, 223n3 “Arachne” (Malcohn), 168–70, 231n28 ARPANet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), 208 arxive.org, 33, 211, 217n37, 219n4 astronomy, 8, 47, 127–28, 154 astrophysics, 17–18, 20, 154 audience, implied, 110 author, implied, 109–10, 187, 232n35 autopoiesis, 87, 105, 156, 191 Bachelard, Gaston, 3, 22, 34–40. See also Poetics of Space, The background independence, 21, 194, 232n1 backward-compatibility, 8 Barthes, Roland, 149, 229n2 Baxter, Stephen, 154 Beamtimes and Lifetimes (Traweek), 44, 52, 101, 151, 191 Benford, Gregory, 158–61, 230nn17–18 Bible, 27–28, 55 Big Bang, 11, 13, 18, 20, 55–57, 122, 150, 157 Big Bang Theory, The, 154–55 Big Splat, 18, 164, 231n25, 231n31 black hole, 11, 13–14, 18, 50, 150, 219, 226n8, 231n27 Blake, William, 232n36 Bogdanov affair, 218n1 Bohr, Niels, 11, 54 Borges, Jorge Luis, 59–60, 98 Born, Max, 11 boson, 85–88, 214n16, 215n24. See also string theory, bosonic boundary condition, 217n40 work, 134–36, 153, 160, 167, 169, 196, 207 246 • Index Brahe, Tycho, 127 brane D-brane, 18, 206, 217n40 p-brane, 206, 221n21 3-brane, 65, 92–95, 98 zero-brane, 17, 19, 206 braneworld, 18–20, 92–97, 225n34, 226n8. See also Big Splat Brief History of Time, A (Hawking), 110, 140–41, 227n11 Brockman, John, 213n5 Buggé, Carole, 7, 149, 171–78 bulk, 18–20, 52, 62, 92–97, 131–32 Bush, Vannevar, 202 Calabi-Yau manifold, 51, 182, 220n20, 223n24, 226n5, 231n30, 232n38 calculus, 141, 227n16, 232n2 Castells, Manuel, 207–11 categorization, 59–69 category, basic-level, 76–82, 86–89, 125–28 Cathedral of Science, 198–99 Catholic Church, 140, 199, 232n2 causation, 11, 21, 23, 39–40, 68, 79–82, 182 CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), 1, 19, 42, 199, 213n1, 216n30 Chapman, Matthew, 27–30, 55–58 charge as allotropy, 182 carried by branes, 131–32 color, 12, 14 electric, 9, 12 Kaluza-Klein particle, 224n33 weak, 84 chirality, 84, 216n31 Clarke, Bruce, 32, 49–51, 102–3, 220n18, 229n3 cognition, 39, 66–67, 80 opposed to perception, 128 cognitive cultural studies, 102 cognitive linguistics, 3, 37, 220n16 cognitive science, 128, 228n21 collaboration, scientific, 176–77, 204, 230n13 comedy, 140–41 commutation, 19, 216n34, 217n46 compactification, 51–52, 84–87, 92, 216n31, 223n24, 226n5 conceit, 87–88, 96, 112–19, 155–57, 162 concretion, 40, 48, 65–69, 129–30, 222n8, 224n25 in imaginative writing, 152–87 configuration space, 228n23 Connes, Alain, 19, 217n46 Connor, Steven, 35–36, 42 constructivism, 194–96, 224n29 consumerism, 32, 168, 207, 228n24 container, image of, 41 brane as, 93–97, 132–33 infinity as, 221n29 particle as, 71–73 string as, 85–86, 119 string theory as, 52 universe as, 57 context of discovery, 35, 38, 51, 106, 121 context of justification, 35, 38, 51 conversion, religious, 139–40, 198–99 Copenhagen (Frayn), 171 cosmic background microwave radiation , 20 cosmic order, 43–45, 155–61 cosmic string, 20, 154, 229n12 cosmology black hole, 50 braneworld, 18, 104 coupled to culture, 44, 199–200, 211, 219n13 emotional power of, 206 galactic, 220n15 Newtonian, 11, 45–46, 91 dark energy, 21 Darwin, Charles, 28 Dawkins, Richard, 119 De Rerum Natura (Lucretius), 67 denouement, 172, 176–77 diagram, Feynman, 223n21 Diamond, Nancy, 202–5, 232n5 dimension eleventh, 27–33, 55–58 five, 215n25 Index • 247 fourth, 45, 103, 229n3 hidden, 22, 87, 120, 152, 192 space-time, 14–23, 51, 64 ten, 18, 22, 83–86, 143, 161, 166–69, 216n31 twenty-six, 16, 21–23, 84–85, 216n25 warped, 210 Dirac, Paul, 11, 61, 63 Dirichlet, Johann, 217n40 discovery compared to religious conversion, 199 conceit of, 156 context of, 35, 38, 51, 106, 121, 212 genuine, 87–89, 106, 108, 123 of nonhuman agency, 96...