In email, David Rosenthal asks my opinion of a rant at globalresearch.ca about the stupidity of physicists:
Indeed, the modern professional physicist has usually subjected himself (less often herself) to extreme specialization, to be able to handle the technical side of the profession. This training is also largely about adopting the culture of the professional physicist: Examples and examples of what are “good problems – good questions” and what are “bad (= ‘unmanageable’) problems”; and examples and examples of how one tames a new problem and fits it into the mould of what a physicist can do. The physics student learns to bridle his curiosity and to restrict himself to what is doable, publishable, useful, profitable; using the unique methods of physics and providing “answers” that other professionals could not. That is the name of the game.
A broader education would not be compatible with this strategy – just enough reading outside of the field to spot new physics opportunities is the most that is recommended. […]
If you’re already smarter than everyone else (as is generally the working assumption in most professions), then you don’t really need to venture out into other fields – that are so primitive and qualitative and descriptive in comparison to physics. […]
Students are drawn to physics by its promise of a manageable mathematical description, an objective method to own the world, to organise and predict the outside. Emotional immaturity, a need for an objective solution to uncertainty or a need to escape reality, draws students to physics and accompanies them in their professional development. The same naivety that couples so well with the physics culture also blocks perception of the complex.
Remarkably, the author is a professor of physics at a Canadian university. I think somebody sat through one too many unpleasant department meetings.
What do I think of this? Not a whole lot. From the headline, and the material I elided, I suspect this is mostly an ideological problem. To the limited extent that he has a point– namely, that the methods of physics restrict us to studying simple and manageable problems– it could apply equally well to pretty much any science. The rest of it is just cranky.
I realize that the stereotype of the physicist as ueber-nerd is a popular one, and even has some truth to it. But that’s not an essential quality of physics. In fact, the very best physicists I know have undergraduate degrees from liberal arts colleges, and physicists of my acquaintance are far more likely to be familiar with classic literature than literary types are to be familiar with physics. I have a hard time taking the stereotype of physicists as narrow-minded social rejects seriously, and it’s sad to find that somebody in the field does.
Ah this stuff strikes a nerve…..
As an undergrad my REAL liberal education was not the required courses from the chinese menu of choices, but deep conversations with physics students in my lab about various books, movies, philosophies, cultures. And gee we even talked to non fizix/non science folks!! In grad school, you get to MEET people from other cultures instead of just reading about them. I have a friend in Maryland who is a world class physicist, and is also quite the gourmet chef, and partakes of the arts, literature, to a large extent. Dude knows his stuff! You wrote a paper with him Chad! He is not typical, but neither is the “weird science – lock me up with my laser and inflatable doll” stereotype either.
I call bullshit.
It is somehow OK for folks in the “fuzzies” to know NOTHING about math and science, have blinking 12:00’s everywhere on a variety of devices, but if I as a physicist don’t have a working knowledge of 17th century spanish authors I’m doomed???? I don’t think so.
My students have to take 300 level foreign language courses to get any credit for a “thematic sequence” whilst foreign language students can get by with Mth 099?
I knew a sociologist who wrote two books on fans of country music. Got good reviews, major theme was they like depressing music like country music cause it makes them feel like they not the only ones in this world that are miserable. Then a funny thing happened. He actually went to a concert, and MET a few fans of country music, and determined they were people! This guy should go to a dinner after a physics colloquim sometime.
I don’t know any Nobel lauretes or true luminaries in the humanities, so I can’t say for sure. But I know those types of physics people, and am amazed by the breadth of their interests and abilities. All I can say is I’ll put ours up against theirs! Rant mode off…….
“It is somehow OK for folks in the “fuzzies” to know NOTHING about math and science, have blinking 12:00’s everywhere on a variety of devices, but if I as a physicist don’t have a working knowledge of 17th century spanish authors I’m doomed????”
To paraphrase Robert Anton Wilson:
‘…there were two classes of symbol manipulators, those who worked with words, and those who worked with mathematics. Those who worked with words dubbed themselves “THE intellectuals” ‘.
I think this Denis Rancourt chap needs to get out of the lab more. His complaint that physicists don’t study “psychology, pedagogy, philosophy, history, politics, sociology, art, etc. as part of their professional training” is no less true of any other discipline, be it medicine, law, accounting, computer science, etc. That is what professional training is about. And if he thinks that physicists are the only professional group who arrogantly assumes they are smarter than everybody else, he needs to meet some doctors, lawyers, and sysadmins.
His characterization that physicists are trained to think and address problems in certain ways is certainly true, but his contention that “the physicist approach” provides no benefit when looking at “complex” problems is contradicted by the ever-expanding field of biophysics and widespread adoption of “physics” techniques (x-ray scattering, optical trapping, quantum dots, etc.) to biological studies, and by the love shown to physics Ph.D.s by financial analyst and management consulting corporations.
I also look askance at his claim that “Eighty percent of physicists in North America work for the military.” Looking at the AIP’s employment surveys, I must conclude that he (or his sources) must be using a very loose definition of “working for the military.”
I take exception to the sysadmin comment, Ms. K.
We don’t start out thinking we’re smarter than anyone else, we come that conclusion after years of non-stop exposure to obstinate and willful stupidity.
“ueber-nerd”
dude, you should enter this in the SB “nerd-off contest.” Only a nerd would use the “e” as a substitute for the umlaut in a word that traditionally leaves it out (unlike, say, “Goethe”).