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Re: Hubris of physicists



How many of you are at schools with more physicists on faculty than
biologists? (Do you have half as many?) I have heard that 90% of high
school students take biology, 50% chemistry, and 20% physics. (Does
someone have a source for these numbers) Is this a result of our
hubris or failure to respond to a market, or have we just lost the
political battle of which should be taken first? I do believe that
physics is the fundamental science, why shouldn't it be taught first?

On Tue, 22 Jul 1997, Michael N. Monce wrote:



Here's something different from conservation of energy: As part
of our freshman advising process we meet with our advisees to discuss the
college's summer reading list several times during the year. This year's
list includes the book Wonderful Life, by Stephen Gould. While reading
the book I kept noticing many undisguised put-downs of physics and
physicists. Finally, near the end, Gould admits his reason for writing
the book was to try and rearrange the pecking order of the sciences
through the example of the work done on the Burgess Shale fauna. Gould
indicates that physics is always first, chemistry second, etc, with his
own field of paleontology coming last and in most people's view barely
passing muster as a science. He rails against the Alvarez find of the
comet impact getting more press than the Burgess Shale despite their same
importance in the understanding of evolution; he seems to blame
this on Alvarez being a physicist.

Meanwhile I open up my July copy of Physics Today, and find a
sidebar by Rober Austin indicating that "Having lived with biologists and
biochemists for a number of years, I know damn well that many of them
can't reason their way out of a paper bag, and that they really need the
analytic and experimental gifts of good physicists to help in the really
major conceptual logjams that are facing modern biology."


I would just like some of your opinions on this. Is 'historical
science', as Gould puts it, a valid field ranking the same as physics? Is
environmental biology (a lot of cataloging and observation) science? Is
Austin right? It would help to have a broader view of this from
physicists before I give my own opinion to those poor freshmen.



Mike Monce
Connecticut College