Why are we here?

It's Friday. Time for some idle musing.

A former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator, one Burton Richter, has written an intriguing little essay on the allegedly sorry state of affairs in particle physics.

Richter's main thesis is that there's too much "theological speculation" going on in the high-energy and cosmology labs these days. He defines such thinking as "the development of models with no testable consequences" as opposed to proper, Popperian, falsifiable theorizing. That seems to a common theme among many observers, what with all the dissing of string theory. (See the comments to this post.) But then he seems to suggest that we should simply be more patient with non-testable ideas. I'm not sure exactly what he's getting at, even after reading it twice. Maybe someone can help me sort it out.

A timelier example might be inflation. It is only slightly older than string theory and, when created, was theological speculation, as is often the case with new ideas until someone devises a test. Inflation was attractive because if it were true it would, among other things, solve the problem of the smallness of the temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Inflation was not testable at first, but later a test was devised that predicted the size and position of the high angular harmonic peaks in the cosmic microwave background radiation. When those were found, inflation moved from being theological speculation to a kind of intermediate state in which all that is missing to make it practical knowledge is a mathematically sound microscopic realization.

Richter also takes a jab at those who would raise the specter of the "anthropic princple," arguing it is nothing more than an observation, not an explanation.

I have a very hard time accepting the fact that some of our distinguished theorists do not understand the difference between observation and explanation, but it seems to be so.

In the end he reverts to a plea for more time, comparing the Hebrew's 40 years in the desert to the the standard model's 30.

Again, I'm not really sure what he's getting at. But if anyone else has some thoughts, I'd like to see them.