Re: Hubris of physicists

["Michael N. Monce" <mnmon@conncoll.edu>]

On Wed, 23 Jul 1997, George Spagna wrote:

> 	It's usually a good idea to beware anyone with an admitted agenda.
> 	It's an even better idea to be aware of hidden agendas when reading
> research results or even popularizations.
>
> Gould is a worthy popularizer of science - but as shameless a
self-promoter as
> ever strutted the stage.

	I thought that he was being a bit thin-skinned, also.


> > 	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."  
>
> Gee - I know some fellow physicists and astronomers who could also benefit
> from those gifts.  The disciplines are not well-served by this kind of
> sniping!

	I totally agree here.  This sort of statement only serves to
encourage the same sort of actions that Gould has taken.

> Why rank the sciences?  Surely there are contributions to understanding
> from all of these various perspectives.  More important to help instill in
> your students a sense of skeptical wonder at the universe around them, and
> a conviction that understanding is within their grasp.  Help them to see
> the difference between science and pseudo-science, help them to see science
> as a human activity rather than as a set of cold, dry factoids to be memorized.


	I could not help but think while reading Parsegian's response to
Austin's sidebar, that perhaps those "scary smart catalogers" in biology
might have been of some great help about 1968 when that zoo of
"elementary particles" was expanding rapidly.


				Mike Monce
				Connecticut College