In the mid-1990s, the science journalist John Horgan interviewed various physicists (including Sheldon Glashow, Edward Witten and Steven Weinberg) who spoke both for and against the strongly speculative (or “nonempirical”) nature of much contemporary physics and cosmology. After Horgan wrote The End of Science , Roger Penrose, Lee Smolin, the writer David Berlinski and Michio Kaku also spoke both for and against (what’s rhetorically called) postmodern physics.
[In the following essay, the quotes from Edward Witten, Stephen Weinberg, Sheldon Glashow, Frank Tipler, David Schramm and Howard Georgi all come from John Horgan’s book The End of Science . The quotes from Lee Smolin, David Berlinski, Michio Kaku, Roger Penrose, Brian Greene, Martin Rees and Jim Holt come from various other books, papers and interviews.]
Firstly, the words “postmodern physics” are at least partly rhetorical in nature. Secondly, no physicist classifies his own physics as postmodern . Thirdly, even those physicists who see certain theories — i.e., those offered by other physicists — as being far too speculative (or “nonempirical”) in nature don’t classify them as postmodern .