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arXiv · 2509.21515

On functional freedom and Penrose's critiques of string theory

Matěj Krátký·James Read
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Abstract

In his The Road to Reality as well as in his Fashion, Faith and Fantasy, Roger Penrose criticises string theory and its practitioners from a variety of angles ranging from conceptual, technical, and methodological objections to sociological observations about the string theoretic scientific community. In this article, we assess Penrose's conceptual/technical objections to string theory, focussing in particular upon those which invoke the notion of `functional freedom'. In general, we do not find these arguments to be successful.

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Matěj Krátký, James Read. 2025-09-25. On functional freedom and Penrose's critiques of string theory. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21515

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