Why *physics*?? Why not economics?!

[porphyrin]

To steer the conversation totally away from Mr. Vox, let me ask this:

Why do people pick 'physics' as the epitome of hard science when they make statements like this?

So-and-so 'can't hack the physics'-- why physics? Why not chemistry? Molecular biology? Biochemistry? Why not math by itself?

What makes physics so special?

FWIW, I hold two bachelor's level degrees in hard science, but it was the applied science (statistics, economics) that truly and well kicked my ass.

Comments

[slithytove.livejournal.com]

Why not economics? Because everyone thinks they understand economics. They read newspaper columnists or TV/radio personalities who advocate reducing taxes here, or increasing them there, higher tariffs or lower tariffs, NAFTA or no NAFTA. They take a position, because the guy they listened to seemed to make sense, and he's a [Democrat | Republican], and they're a [Democrat | Republican], too!

They don't understand that there's any more to it.

I think most people don't understand how little they know of medicine, either. "But he has a cold, doctor, why isn't he getting an antibiotic?"

Physics and math, though: you look at a page full of equations with lots of huge sigmas in them, and little italic e's all over the place, and you *know* you don't know this stuff. And Ann Coulter and Paul Krugman aren't all over the TV telling them what opinion to have about Fermat's Last Theorem, or whether the photon has mass.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Here's what I said when you asked this on Electrolite, in case someone who's interested isn't reading it:

Because physics is as tidy a source of data as most people can arrange. Math by itself is disconnected from real world data and off building castles in the sky, and chemistry and biology and, good heavens, economics, they all have so many things affecting the data that it just can't be made pure and clean and shiny no matter how hard you scrub.

Reductionism. I really think that's what it is. Physics is the closest you can get to Platonist attitudes of math while still having any claim to make sense of an observable world.

Vox (un)populi

[safewrite.livejournal.com]

Face it, in certain circles physics is 'sexy.' Not in the traditional Miss/Mr. Universe sense, but in an intellectual sense.

Point in case. Last year Brian Green, who has written books on string theory, was part of a debate I attended (about Dark Matter) at the New York Museum of Natural Science. There were other, equally fascinating scientists there - of both genders. A scientist from Bell Labs who had invented and done experiments with something called 'gravitational lensing' was the man who convinced me that dark matter does exist. I'd done my homework and came as a skeptic, but he won me over with his replicable, demonstrable well-thought-out and flawlessly executed research. There was a line for autographs afterward and I made sure to get him to sign my program while thanking him for his valuable work.

Brian Green, on that same line, was mobbed. He might as well have been a rock star. His fans (no other word for it, sorry) all but drooled over the man. And what had he contributed to the debate? Not a hell of a lot, but he was talking about alternate universes and mind-blowing possibilities. The sorts of things science fiction writers love to showcase in their plots. The sort of things that make your poor, tired brain stretch, snap and reshape itself in new patterns.

That sort of mental high, that societally-correct altered consciousness is, I think, why many people like read (and write) hard science fiction. It makes their mental universe expand. It makes their spirits soar. Theoretical physics is a frontier of the mind, promising horrors and magic, new worlds and new lives. The real-life scientists that can communicate these wonders to us (Einstein, Feynman, Green) can become the pop icons of the scientific world. At least, I'm fascinated with all of it, and choose the panels I go to at conventions accordingly. I've noticed editors like Stanley Schmidt of Analog and hard science fiction writers showing up at the same panels, and I've watched them mirror my delight at any new concepts expounded there.

And really, science can be much like magic past a certain point. Manipulating new worlds with the theories of theoretical physics is as close as most rational people get to practicing wizardry.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

*pets*

[katallen.livejournal.com]

My theory du jour?

The atom bomb and forty years of fear - we're not so very different from our ancestors worshipping gods of destruction. The atom bomb stands for security, power, apocalypse... and physics and physicists are inextricably tied up with that symbology, the high priests of destructive innovation.

The common myth of physics is of cool rational intelligent god-like destructive forces being harnessed and explored by cool rational intelligent god-like genii.

Biology's biggest bogies are germ warfare and genetic manipulation - and neither of those really has the same impact on our imaginations, alsorans next to the bright stark image of the mushroom cloud.

The atom bomb was a project with a definite aim and governed by intellect -the discovery of penicillin OTH was an accident that nearly didn't happen.

In modern fiction (post-nuclear) the physicist often has absolute control over his creation - while the biologist seldom does.

::grins:: I think maybe surgery is generally given a higher status for the same reasons... the weilding of a knife so much more direct and awesome than handing out a few pills.

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

I always found physics in school a sod of a lot easier than chemistry. I didn't even go near biology. Physics is a wonderfully sensible and non-messy discipline, in my opinion. I still understand a lot more of physics than I do of any other science.