"Progress in science proceeds in fits and starts. Some periods are filled with great breakthroughs; at other times researchers experience dry spells. Scientists put forward results... theoretical and experimental. The results are debated... sometimes... discarded, sometimes... modified, and sometimes they provide inspirational jumping-off points for new and more accurate ways of understanding... a zig zag path toward what we hope will be ultimate truth, a path that began with humanity's earliest attempts to fathom the cosmos and whose end we cannot predict. Whether string theory is an incidental rest stop... a landmark turning point, or... the final destination we do not know. But the last two decades of research by hundreds of... physicists and mathematicians from numerous countries have given us well-founded hope that we are on the right and possibly final track."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe (1999, 2003) Ch. 1 "Tied Up with a String."
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/History_of_science
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History of science
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