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[Phys-l] The humble physicist



Some physicists in this list should seriously ponder on this article, "The humble physicist".

It hardly raises an eyebrow when someone proclaims that physicists are an arrogant lot. The topic recurs periodically at the Physics Today lunch table and even was the subject of a February 2003 Opinion piece that J. Murray Gibson wrote for the magazine. Gibson took the arrogance of physicists as a given and often helpful quality, but he argued that it had its negative consequences as well.

I think I see where the notion of the arrogant physicist comes from. First of all, some high-profile physicists are undeniably arrogant. Physicists take pride in their work and think it is important. Perhaps most significantly, physicists tend to think that their scientific worldview, with its ideals of objectivity and empiricism, is superior to the alternatives.

But aren’t those all human qualities, not doled out in special measure to physicists? Any subgroup you can name has its share of arrogant jerks. Pretty much all academics take pride in their work and think it’s important. So does the guy down the hall in advertising, and, I expect, so too do my lawyer, barber, and most other workers. And isn’t it almost axiomatic that once you’ve found a worldview that works for you, you’ll find it superior to the ones you’ve rejected?

When you put a bunch of physicists in a room, the exchanges are likely to be blunt and delivered at high volume. That form of commerce has often been called arrogant, but it is not arrogant per se, nor does it imply an underlying arrogance of the speaker. Rather, in my experience, the physicists’ discourse is a reflection of a passionate desire to know and the intense frustration of just not getting it.

On the other hand, several characteristics of how physicists (and sometimes scientists generally) do business suggest to me an arrogance below the academic or human norms.

For starters, science, by its nature, has an important deflating feature. Most scientists would agree that they can’t claim to be doing science unless they admit up front that everything they say can, in principle, be unambiguously proved to be garbage. I don’t know of any movie critics who have volunteered that sentiment—nor should they.

Unusually social animals

By academic standards, physicists are unusually social animals. Physics is sufficiently difficult that most of us find we need help to puzzle through whatever problem we’re working on. But it’s not just that we need help. We like visiting with colleagues in their offices to see what they’re working on and perhaps offer a suggestion or two. If we could somehow subtract out the frustration, most of us would say that our blunt exchanges are fun. And many of us go out of our way in our papers to acknowledge useful conversations.

An anecdote from my days as a teacher at a liberal arts college may shed some light on differences between scientists and other academics. As part of its faculty development program, the college sponsored lunchtime talks in which a professor would share his or her research with the rest of the faculty. Talks given by members of humanities and social science departments were generally well attended. Talks given by members of the science departments were generally well attended . . . by science faculty.

I recall one such talk, given by a colleague in the physics department, whose audience comprised scientists and one member of the English department. She happened to be the director of faculty development and was required to attend (but, to be fair, she did so willingly). After my colleague’s talk, we gave him the usual grilling: Your explanation of such and such didn’t work for me, so can you explain it again? Would this idea address some of the worries you described in your talk? Your comments about the Johnson rod suggest that thus and so might be an interesting thing to look at; have you tried that?

After a while my colleague from the English department asked if the behavior she had just witnessed was typical of what happens when scientists get together. When we assured her it was, she commented, “Wow. It seems like you all are really trying to get at the truth. In my field, we just stand up and try to show how smart we are.”

As an editor at Physics Today, part of my job is to ask experts to critique articles we have received for publication or journal papers on which we may report. My advisers seem to make every effort to be fair. When they have negative things to say, they are rarely gratuitous; a typical recommendation against covering a paper is couched in language like, “The work, though valid and interesting, does not rise to Physics Today’s high standards.” When I have my own reports critiqued by outside physicists, I am consistently asked to add names to the list of folks I have cited for an accomplishment.

A large part of my job is to try to better the expository articles of highly regarded physicists. I suggest that the word here is not what the author meant, that the logic there isn’t convincing, that the organization is not transparent, that the figures are cluttered and the captions uninformative. (I try to do all that in the most diplomatic way possible!) I have found that, with zero exceptions, the authors take my suggestions seriously. Some of my ideas, I learn, are misguided, and some of them don’t convince the author. But in the great majority of cases, at the end of the day the authors thank me for numerous small and not-so-small improvements.

Physicists: social, fair if not generous toward colleagues, open to the possibility that their ideas may be wrong, and remarkably willing to accept criticism. Sounds to me like the opposite of arrogant.

Steven K. Blau