{"id":578,"date":"2006-09-07T09:40:10","date_gmt":"2006-09-07T09:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/07\/are-physicists-smart\/"},"modified":"2006-09-07T09:40:10","modified_gmt":"2006-09-07T09:40:10","slug":"are-physicists-smart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/07\/are-physicists-smart\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Physicists Smart?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In email, David Rosenthal asks my opinion of a rant at globalresearch.ca about the stupidity of physicists<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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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. <\/p>\n

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. […] <\/p>\n

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. […]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Remarkably, the author is a professor of physics at a Canadian university. I think somebody sat through one too many unpleasant department meetings.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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… Continue reading Are Physicists Smart?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}