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It is generally assumed that physicists are smart people. Even some
chemists look up to physicists. Physics is reputed to be a difficult
subject, the stuff of nightmares in high school. The greatest scientists
that come to mind are often the physicists Einstein and Newton. The
inventors of the atomic bomb are held in awe, as are the cosmologists that
gave us black holes and worm holes into parallel universes. The proverbial
rocket scientists are physicists. It is generally assumed that anyone who
has studied quantum mechanics and can work-in the concept of entropy at a
cocktail party is pretty smart.
I'm a physicist and I've trained physicists and I'd like to advance a
different view: That generally, physicists, as a group, are pretty stupid,
and certainly no smarter than any other group of self-centered and
self-serving professionals.
Physicists limit themselves to physics, to simple phenomena that are
amenable to manageable mathematical descriptions or to more complex
phenomena that are reduced to simplistic descriptions via appropriate
filters that are said to "capture the essential features". Physicists
study only what they can, given their specific and limited methods,
possibly more so than in any other natural science discipline.
This in itself is an efficient and productive approach but physicists go
much further. As a matter of professional culture, physicists believe that
their methods could eventually lead to a deep and thorough understanding
of all phenomena (including human consciousness, learning, politics, etc.,
for example), given time, dedication, sufficient funding, and powerful
enough computers. Physicists believe that all sciences and all branches of
human knowledge are physics, ultimately. They arrive at this conclusion
having never read or studied psychology, pedagogy, philosophy, history,
politics, sociology, art, etc. as part of their professional training.
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. A broader education might also cloud one's
professional identity and one's professionalism. Eighty percent of
physicists in North America work for the military, in the world's largest
military economy. But of course physics students are drawn to physics
because all can be understood via the physics portal and because worm
holes are neat. Students search for meaning and social status and find
military and corporate service, often in an environment that maintains the
neat-problem mental bubble first cultivated in sci-fi and electronic game
land.
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.
Other fields.? Other methods.? Complexity.? Professional physicists have
so buried themselves into their culture of the doable, the mappable, the
reducible, the solvable, the codable, that they are largely unable to
perceive complexity.
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.
That is the main reason, in my view, that physicists are stupid: They are
unable to perceive complexity, a complexity of the real world that goes
far beyond what physics will ever be able to handle in any universe. They
are unable to even get a glimpse of the textures and subplots that may be
intrinsically incompatible with mathematical description. To them,
mathematics is the language of reality, not a mere human invention or
genetically-delimited expression. To them, the objective mind is
all-powerful and able to open all doors. To them, useful perception is
physiological and does not benefit from the uncertainties of one's
emotional state. To the physicist, communication is data transmission, not
the subtleties that can only be captured by the right configuration of
social and emotional attributes. The physicist deals in hard bits, not the
imperceptibles that determine our animal and social lives. The physicist
is unaware of his blindness and glibly confident in his perception,
especially his perception of himself as a systematic unraveller of the
truth.
If at least he was harmless!
Denis G. Rancourt is Professor of Physics at the University of Ottawa.
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