String theory: In search of (meta)physical objects

Abstract

By analysing the ways gives its precious contribution to scien tific discovery, we are faced with a kind of shortage that confuses our minds a lot. Indeed philosophers of science point out several examples of metaphysical thought, such as atomism and mechanicism, but also more general ideas such as determinism, metaphysical ideas connected with psychology,1 some kind of conceptions about human nature and so on. Thus, just because of this super abundance of characterizations it's quite difficult to understand what is to be considered as metaphysics. Indeed, by reading essays by K. Popper, I. Lakatos, J. Watkins, J. Agassi, D. Antiseri, e.g., one becomes of the opinion that they are inclined to identify as metaphysics nothing else than a guiding line of thought, a general background tendency about the issues at stake. Although those philosophers made deep analysis about the different ways come in contact with the enterprise, an exact codification of what we preci sely mean by metaphysics is still lacking, and this leads to obvious misun derstandings. Nevertheless, nowadays research in theoretical physics is calling for a clari fication. If we consider, for instance, the string theory we'll soon realize that scientific has strongly entered the debate. For that reason it's probably time to go deeper in defining that very which is in effect supposed to be useful to enterprise.