[FRIAM] anthropological observations

[Steven A Smith]

Frank -
> I may have mentioned this before but physicists, chemists, engineers
> etc. rarely talk about philosophy of science.  Social scientists,
> particularly.psychologists, do much more.  Some mathematicians do
> because they believe they are dealing with God.

My undergrad career in Physics turned a corner when I took an
opportunity in an upper division class to write an essay on the "role of
Philosophy in Physics".   The professor had asked for an essay on "the
topic of your choice" because he said that it was important for hard
scientists to be able to ask critical questions about the topics they
were studying and to communicate them clearly, not just derive and solve
equations.  

We were a small cadre of upper-class physics majors and a few grad
students from other disciplines... perhaps a dozen or less?  There was
no graduate program in Physics at my university (though there was in
Chemistry, Biology, Geology...) and I think the core professors were
frustrated or hungry for more stimulating experiences with students than
the usual undergrad context offered. 

I was mildly worried that my subject was going to be dismissed as
off-topic, as the other students unrolled their deepish-dives into
specific questions in Physics.  My classmates did "roll their eyes" a
little when I announced my topic and started in.   The professor,
however, who had been rather critical of/hard on me up to that point in
this and other classes, interrupted me to ask penetrating questions, and
soon the rest of the class was nodding their heads in appreciation or at
least understanding.  I can't remember the full arc of my essay but I
remember in particular presenting things like Zeno's paradox to  discuss
ideas such as atomicity and the different interpretations of quantum
theory and the larger implications of relativity.  

This experience melted the ice with that professor who had been critical
of my work-style for many semesters.  I rarely wrote down *every* step
in my derivations (meaning I would balance more than one element of an
equation in a single step) and I rarely did *all* the assigned homework
problems (Once I felt I understood a concept, I would skip the remaining
problems and go to the next conceptually different problem... and I was
running my own business and had a young child by then and had no
patience for what felt like "make-work").  My weak "performance" in the
mundane tasks of homework balanced against my above-average performance
on tests (where I forced myself to write down every step and do every
problem) made me a pretty solid B student while most of the others in my
cohort were over-achievers trying to nail a 4.0 grade average.  

At the end of that class, the professor (notoriously hard-nosed) offered
me an independent study class the next semester which allowed me to rush
through a medley of advanced topics that were not offered as formal
classes.  I dearly enjoyed his reading assignments and the two hours of
discussion each week, we covered a LOT of ground that last semester.  
It wasn't my first A in a Physics class but it WAS my first in one of
HIS classes!  It was also a great preparation for working at LANL where
I encountered esoteric topics on a very regular basis.

It might be noted that my second-most favorite course of study and other
favorite professor was in Philosophy...  a professor and domain of study
that taught me how to think about ideas, not just about "things" which
seemed to be what *all* of the engineering classes I took and *most* of
the science classes I took were about.  This is where I was first made
aware that a grand unified theory of everything was an oxymoron, why
some physical phenomena could *appear* to move faster than light-speed
(e.g. two quasar-beams crossing in intergalactic space), and an
intuitive framing of Godel's work in incompleteness, etc before I
encountered it in CS.   

- Steve