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Culture, history and society

Culture, history and society

Hanging together

02 Oct 2002

"Physics is in crisis. We have lost our ideals and focus as a unified field."

These are the dramatic opening sentences of a recent article, “Physics in crisis”, by Sidney Nagel, professor of experimental condensed-matter physics at the University of Chicago*. Nagel is worried by a lack of unity in the physics community that manifests itself as a lack of interest in, and appreciation of, the work of colleagues in other sub-disciplines of the subject. He blames this problem on five splits in the physics community: the split between sub-disciplines, between big and small science, between basic and applied physics, between the emergent and reductive approaches to science, and between theory and experiment in all areas of physics.

As an example of the problem, Nagel ventures that “a colloquium talk with the words Standard Model in its title would not be immediately engaging to a condensed-matter physicist, nor would one with the words high-temperature superconductivity be attractive to a community of particle physicists (nor for that matter to a group of soft-condensed-matter physicists). Such division is clearly not good but I think it is a shocking and unfortunate fact. We are, it seems, very parochial.” Of course, it is a full-time job keeping up with your own narrow field, but there are many occasions – most of them related to funding – when it is vital for the physics community to present a united front.

Of the different splits identified by Nagel, the one between the reductive and emergent approaches is the most philosophical. In simple terms, particle physics exemplifies the reductive approach, whereas condensed-matter physicists favour the emergent, collective or “more is different” approach (see Physics World December 2001 p5). This is hardly something to worry about, but the fact that the fences between particle physics and condensed matter – the two biggest sub-fields in physics – have not been fully mended in the US since the cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider almost a decade ago is a cause for concern.

The overall thrust of Nagel’s argument is sound. We must, he argues, rediscover what different areas of physics have in common, and we must identify and articulate the big questions that have still to be answered. He also calls for changes in the educational system that will “instill in students some sense of the breadth and interrelatedness as well as the depth of physics”.

Communication is central to Nagel’s analysis: he finds it “disheartening” that physicists who try to convey the excitement of physics to the general public receive “grudging acknowledgement at best” from other physicists. But attitudes to communications within the physics community also need attention. As an example he returns to departmental colloquia that are difficult for specialists to understand, never mind the general audience for which they are intended. (We often encounter a version of this problem when editing articles for Physics World, which is intended for a general physics readership.) This could be the familiar catch-22 problem: speakers will not pitch their talks at a general audience when there are only specialists from their own field in attendance, and the general audience will only turn up when speakers stop talking for the specialist.

Nagel concludes with some homework assignments for his readers: organize a symposium on an experimental topic that will bring condensed-matter and particle physicists together; repeat this task with a theoretical topic; and, finally, answer honestly why someone from outside your subfield should be interested in what you are doing. Then, GIVE THOSE REASONS CLEARLY IN ALL YOUR TALKS (his capitalization). Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s first scientists, outlined the alternative at the signing of the declaration of independence: “We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

*FermiNews 30 August (www.fnal.gov/pub/ferminews/ferminews02-08-30/p1.html); also published in the September issue of Physics Today

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