“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”
--Galileo Galilei
Perhaps some of my blog correspondents will recognize the equation in the illustration to the left. It is a very famous equation, almost as famous as Einstein's e=mc2, and it appears on tee-shirts available in college book stores. Recognize it? It's Schrodinger's equation. You may recognize the name even if you didn't recognize his equation since he is famous for his thought experiment involving a cat in a box which, we are told, illustrates that, on a quantum level, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Really. Alive. Dead.
Although Schrodinger may be a bit esoteric, everyone has by now heard of the Big Bang Theory--even if only as the title of a TV sit-com. (I will defer to another time the task of deconstructing that show for what it tells us about how the usual American stereotypes about science and scientists have "evolved" in the homeland.) Ever since Einstein became science's first media star, it has become impossible to keep certain phrases from entering the vernacular. Terms like black holes, inflation, the standard model, the uncertainty principle, entanglement, even, of late, Higgs bosons, CERN and particle colliders appear almost daily in the media. Thanks to PBS's Brian Greene, we may add to the list talk of string theory, multi-verses, eleven possible dimensions and so on. Millions have not only heard of Stephen Hawking and recognize the man in the wheel chair with the robotic voice; his book, A Brief History of Time sold 10 million copies. (A remarkable publishing phenomenon, since just about everyone who has read the book admits to not being able to follow it at all. More of this later.) I guess it was inevitable that even Oprah managed to get into the act. She invited physics professor Leonard Susskind onto her show a few years back to discuss the until then esoteric view that, contrary to Hawking's theory, all that seems "real" to us is actually a holographic projection of a two-dimensional matrix surrounding a black hole. Which brings to mind movies like The Matrix, just one of a host of movies that, in a long film tradition, borrows freely from science and science-fiction alike.
Now, let's get to Youtube. There is no doubt that it is a wonderful resource. A little patience circumventing a lot of clutter can reward you with a valuable companion to Google for the kind of learning one can achieve outside of, let's say, a university classroom. In fact, both of these internet resources often allow one a kind of access to what is available inside our most prestigious universities. Yale comes to mind, for example, as an institution that has placed on the web lectures by some of its most acclaimed faculty. (The lectures on history are particularly good, often serving as a
reminder of the limitations of lectures many of us attended as
under-graduates.) Youtube allows you to watch everything from very short video material to full-fledged lectures lasting over an hour on a wide variety of subjects. Given the luxury of free time, we are free to follow our own unique learning curve, surfing from one site to another, rejecting some material, lingering on others for hours.I have always been fascinated by cosmology and the knowledge claims of twentieth century physics. Here, then, I hoped, was my opportunity to see if I could actually understand concepts like relativity, space-time, the wave/particle dichotomy. I mean really understand, not just on the surface level that, for all their virtues, PBS and the BBC present, but with real insight. And herein lies the rub. What did I learn after fifty hours or so watching those Youtube lectures? Not a heck of a lot.
I am not ready to blame Youtube for my frustration. Perhaps there are sites that would allow me to prepare better by spending time acquiring the necessary background in advanced algebra and calculus that would open more doors for me. Because herein lies the rub. There is simply no way that one can understand what it is these talking heads from the physics community are talking about without--to borrow the popular phrase--doing the math. It has become a fixture of talks designed to explain science to the lay public that, undeterred, presenters will bend over backwards to assure their audiences that they will not be called upon to understand any of the math, any of the equations that are intrinsic to really understanding the subject.
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.
--from Wikipedia entry on C.P. Snow
The above quotation is from a lecture delivered in 1959 by C.P. Snow which he titled, "The Two Cultures." I would argue that in the ensuing six decades since Snow gave his lecture very little has changed. If anything, science has become more esoteric and thus even less accessible to the vast majority who are--dare we admit?--mathematically illiterate. While, on the one hand, the only remedy to this problem seems to be the obvious, which is to say that, if you really care, you have no choice but to take the painstaking steps to acquiring the language of science, yet, and this is the real point in my writing this piece, I believe that more can be done, a great deal more.
While Snow was presenting his thesis in 1959, I was a student at Brooklyn Technical High School where we were told by our English teachers that, (on the assumption that we were destined for careers in science and engineering), as future scientists and engineers, we had an obligation to learn how to express ourselves clearly. While it was true that most Tech students would go with the program, stubborn recalcitrants like myself were placed in what they called the College Prep Program, a track that accomodated boys (only boys attended in those days) whose aptitiudes were more in the humanities. We were bluntly told that scientists and engineers were notorious for their poor writing skills and their inability to communicate with anyone outside of the fold. We were going to be different. No one had to twist my arm to make me believe that this was not just a malicious stereotype since I found that both in the way math and science were typically taught as well as in the way math and science text books were written rote learning ruled. All of my childhood curiosity soon dulled. I was one of those boys who always took things apart to see how they worked, whined until I got a Gilbert chemistry set for Christmas, looked at the night sky with wonder, read science-fiction and loved dinosaurs. At Tech, my grades in math and science nose-dived. Rebellious and resistant to authority even as a child, I felt that my science texts were more catechisms than guides to true understanding and discovery. There is one bit of business in science texts which, though seemingly trifling, always left me frustrated and angry.
...I will discuss this and conclude this post in a blog to follow.
While Snow was presenting his thesis in 1959, I was a student at Brooklyn Technical High School where we were told by our English teachers that, (on the assumption that we were destined for careers in science and engineering), as future scientists and engineers, we had an obligation to learn how to express ourselves clearly. While it was true that most Tech students would go with the program, stubborn recalcitrants like myself were placed in what they called the College Prep Program, a track that accomodated boys (only boys attended in those days) whose aptitiudes were more in the humanities. We were bluntly told that scientists and engineers were notorious for their poor writing skills and their inability to communicate with anyone outside of the fold. We were going to be different. No one had to twist my arm to make me believe that this was not just a malicious stereotype since I found that both in the way math and science were typically taught as well as in the way math and science text books were written rote learning ruled. All of my childhood curiosity soon dulled. I was one of those boys who always took things apart to see how they worked, whined until I got a Gilbert chemistry set for Christmas, looked at the night sky with wonder, read science-fiction and loved dinosaurs. At Tech, my grades in math and science nose-dived. Rebellious and resistant to authority even as a child, I felt that my science texts were more catechisms than guides to true understanding and discovery. There is one bit of business in science texts which, though seemingly trifling, always left me frustrated and angry.
...I will discuss this and conclude this post in a blog to follow.
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