I call current theoretical high-energy physics metatheoretical physics. I also used to make the joke that I chose to get a Ph.D. in mathematics and not physics so I didn't have to feel embarrassed by my subject matter.

Finance is the brain [tumour] of the economy

Physics is anything but a cold, objective look at "reality". Great theories are those that capture the imagination. Relativity, quantum mechanics, and the mathematical framework of those theories are very pleasant. The sense of transcendence of a theory is quite important to how we feel about it, which is of no small consequence to how it will be received by the community of physicists. Physics probably fills some important narrative role for a secular era. The high priests of physics (theorists) are often true believers. The last sentence is close to pure speculation. I have known young physicists (ones still getting their PhDs), I wanted to be one myself once. I remember my sense of awe when first confronted with relativity and QM, watching the equations unfold, the feeling of a connection with something significant and important. Mathematics held the ultimate truth, physics pervaded the world, binding it into a coherent whole. I abandoned what I think of now as a rather naive romanticism, but while it had me captive I never thought about it this way, it was pure, unarguable, inescapable truth. My friends who did stay in physics seemed to feel the same way about it. Maybe they grew out of it, maybe they do physics without believing. I don't see how anyone could, I certainly couldn't.

So, string theory is the latest "thing". It doesn't (yet?) connect with experimental abilities, but like earlier theoretical projects it connects well emotionally. We can argue about what science is, and try as we might to make it cold, objective, and try to believe that it is of a "reality" which is really, really there, irrespective of the fancy of the theorist. A set of computations that work out, that predict, a patchwork of abstractions that return a measurable quantity when invoked correctly, the stuff of engineering and applied science, this is not theoretical physics, because it lacks exactly the emotional exponent of theories past.

If we find the right equation, then we know, what, exactly?