A negative of having some of the big names teach is that sometimes being a great researcher (in the sciences) or writer (in literature) may not make you a great or even passable teacher (there are notable exceptions – like Feyman for instance).

The point I imagine he was trying to make is that teaching and research are different functions and that it is easier to recruit a big name to harvard (where he is a former dean of the faculty) if you don’t make them teach so much.

There is a school of thought that you shoulden’t make people do something they would rather not do…..and by this I mean many of the best teachers will be people who choose to be teachers……I guess the above sentences have interesting implications for the rest of the debate about scientific literacy…..but I would argue that by “something” I mean apply such a great effort (i.e. design and execute a course) for something they would rather not to. Because many of these professors (not necessarily a majority or even a plurality) will not put in the effort, and so people take an intro physics course from a big name but get very little from it….

thanks for letting me post -jeff

Z,

I only know what happens at the U of C, but in the winter quarter freshman
physics courses are being taught by Sid Nagel and Philippe Cluzel. They
are both “big people” in my opinion, and both straddle the worlds of experiment
and theory quite effectively. I believe Jim Cronin has also taught
freshman physics. Can’t get much bigger than that.

It is true that theorists teach these courses less often, but I think this is mainly because they are needed to teach graduate QM, QFT, GR and so on.

What makes knowledge normative? i.e. When is knowledge of P obligatory? And is education the process whereby an individual fulfills his obligations in regards to knowledge?

I feel a conflict between two different (intuitions?) about knowledge that need to be distinguished:

1. Knowledge is an end in itself.
2. Knowledge is valuable because it is useful.

I find (1) very attractive, but I also think (2) does some important work when we judge what we as individuals need to learn — i.e. playing the piano may indeed be a valuable skill, but I need some way of assessing whether *I* need to learn to play the piano, and in order to do so, I need to know whether playing the piano is going to be useful to me. Note that “useful” as I think of it is a very broad category — something can be useful even because it is pleasurable.

I feel somehow (it’s hard to work out just how) these two assessments of knowledge come into conflict when one makes claims that everyone should know X.

Of course, it is popular to argue that knowledge of science is a must in a democratic society — because voters need to make informed decisions on funding and matters of public policy. Well, perhaps — but I would rather see a proposal as to what constitutes such “basic” scientific knowledge. And I think there are some special difficulties in coming up with such a proposal, because knowing about science is surely not just (or perhaps is not even) knowing about facts, but rather being able to think in a certain way. Who, on the other hand, will appreciate this method if he is never going to put it to use?

Oh, and the next time you think that things like linguistics is worthless (or not as worthwhile as science), try doing science without words or symbols. Semiology/semiotics is essential for science’s work as science would be impossible without it (just like metaphysics).

While we can perhaps dream that everyone should live up to Moshe’s high standards:

“I’d be amazed if an educated person did not know (or at least wanted to know) that the universe is expanding, the sun is fueled by nuclear reaction, about the uncertainty principle and the principles of special relativity etc.etc.”

For the most part i’m happy if all Thom Yorke can do is write music I like, Kundera write books I find interesting and Shane Warne spin a cricket ball.

And maybe it says something about my friends/university/country but I would say most of my non-science studying friends (who are doing law/politics/commerce and I classify as ‘educated’) would struggle to explain any of the above listed ‘basic concepts of physics’ let alone all!

m

The General Population’s Ignorance of Science-Related Societal Issues: A Challenge for the University

Re: SPECIAL REPORT: America’s Failure in Science Education (Business Week)

Another point to consider is how economics drives higher ed choices. Higher education is driven by the dollar and he who brings in the gold rules and that is not teaching in research tier universities, private or state supported (really state-assisted these days). State support is now about a quarter of the cost of running higher tier state universities. Student rears will fill the chairs almost irrespective of how excellent or poor my teaching but if I bring in a million dollars of grant funding per year, $500K goes to the administration for libraries, lights and other costs of running the place. Hence, were I an administrator it is quite clear where I want my faculty’s emphasis when they are making decisions about where to allocate their time.

In state institutions, football and basketball coaches are the highest paid state employees by far, probably an order of magnitude higher than the most elite physics professor, for a reason. Successful programs bring huge dollars to the institution.

Just a note to remind you that physics is so immense that you will remain for the rest of your career as ignorant of the 99.9 per cent of physics as the people you criticize as being ignorant. Soon, in your education, you will be asked to specialize in a narrow field. Your narrow field will take the majority of your time outside of your administrative and teaching duties. This will leave you no time to cure your ignorance about physics outside your specialization. You will read, when you get a chance, general publications such as Physics Today, to get a feeling of what is going on elsewhere. Eventually you will learn to repeat standard professional mythologies if you ever need to express an opinion outside your specialty. Please let me know if you disagree with this prognosis of your physics career. I would be very much interested in knowing if you claim to know the entire physics.

I strongly disagree with GP1′s prognosis. I certainly don’t claim to know everying about all of
physics, but when I received my Ph.D, my understanding was (and still is)
that I was (am) supposed to be qualified to teach any undergraduate course in my department.
For example, I (an astrophysicist specializing in general relativity) should be able to (perhaps after
a bit of review) teach the 4th-year-undergraduate course in solid-state physics or optics. I think
I could meet that test, and I think most of my fellow astrophysicists could too. In terms of
general knowledge (without studying), I’d like to hope that most of my fellow astrophysicists
have at least a vague notion of what a valence band or a superfluid is, just like most solid-state physicsts have at least a vague notion of what a quasar or black hole is.

Yes, this does require “continuing education” on all sides: I read Physics Today, Physics World, The American Journal of Physics, sci.physics.research, cosmicvariance.com, and assorted other journals and web sites. And I suspect most other physicists with PhDs read a similar variety of both “specialist” and “general” material. Now, where is C. P. Snow when we need him?

It has always seemed to me that such things are, or are the study of, arbitrary rules made up by people, rather than fundamental laws of the universe, and as such, while perhaps interesting or even useful, are not as important as science. I think a glance around one’s surroundings, and thought as to which items would and would not exist without science and engineering, will support that view.

@ Jim(#34) : I wouldn’t say that. This whole claim of science being more fundamental, is a bit pointless. As s.y. rightly pointed out, Linguistics is a science, and there are parts of it where you consider propositional calculus and almost merge into correctness proofs and mathematics. But even for the non-sciences, like Art or Literature, I’m sure that as an educated person you should have the knowledge of at least one foreign language, a basic overview of world history, and some idea of important/famouse literarure & art movements etc.

Just a note to remind you that physics is so immense that you will remain for the rest of your career as ignorant of the 99.9 per cent of physics as the people you criticize as being ignorant. Soon, in your education, you will be asked to specialize in a narrow field. Your narrow field will take the majority of your time outside of your administrative and teaching duties. This will leave you no time to cure your ignorance about physics outside your specialization. You will read, when you get a chance, general publications such as Physics Today, to get a feeling of what is going on elsewhere. Eventually you will learn to repeat standard professional mythologies if you ever need to express an opinion outside your specialty. Please let me know if you disagree with this prognosis of your physics career. I would be very much interested in knowing if you claim to know the entire physics.

@GP1(Commenter #33) : It seems that I am guilty of unintentionally and inadvertently giving the impression of arrogance. I did not mean to to come across like that. I do not claim to “know all of Physics” or even a large fraction of all Physics related knowledge that we posess today. My point is that there is a certain corpus of basic knowledge that everyon should know as part of undergraduate curriculum. What I am shocked by is that when an academic doesn’t know some basic Physics noone(or at least not enough people) is concerned. An equivalent statement would be a scientist saying that he or she doesn’t know whether Julius Ceaser & Chenghis Khan were contemporaries or not. That should shock anyone, but the other statement doesn’t, why?

As you get wiser you will learn that it is not what you know that counts but what you don’t know. So value your ignorance not what you already know. You will learn to value people who say “I don’t know, but I can look it up.”

I definitely value people who say that, but you do agree that there are some things that ideally everyone should know, to call themselves and intellectual, don’t you?

I too had the reaction that basic scientific concepts ought to be part of the requirements for a four-year degree.

As to ignorance of humanities topics such as languanges, linguistics, and ball-room dancing – guilty.

It has always seemed to me that such things are, or are the study of, arbitrary rules made up by people, rather than fundamental laws of the universe, and as such, while perhaps interesting or even useful, are not as important as science. I think a glance around one’s surroundings, and thought as to which items would and would not exist without science and engineering, will support that view.

This goes both ways: scholars can’t be bothered with the sciences, and most scientists I know can’t be bothered investing time in, say, philosophy (mainly because they think that it is largely irrelevant).

By the way, I was taught special relativity in my first year by Gerard ‘t Hooft, and I remember that everybody thought that was terribly exciting.

“The state also does invest in the education of scientists, but only with the objective of reproducing the scientific labour power needed to produce innovation. It is well understood why, under conditions of industrial capitalism, there is systematically greater investment in production than in reproduction of the labour consumed in production. Hence, there is a systematic bias in the state support for science: more resources are invested in research facilities than in education. (In particular, the state is no longer interested in enabling people through education to understand the world around them. Not only has education been delinked from the needs of theology, but “understanding” is something that most scientists look down upon as “philosophy”, since it consumes the time that could be more actively spent in the process of engineering useful innovations.) As a result of this systemic bias against education, in the state support for science, most people are scientifically illiterate, even in the developed countries.”

I did look up the Caltech budget. In 2001, 41% was spent on research, 36% on academic support and teaching (here). But Caltech is an unusually research-oriented school. On the other hand, the above is talking about what the State spends rather than what the schools spend.

The main reason to bring up the above is that since scientific illiteracy is a long-term problem, maybe there are underlying economic structural problems rather than it being a matter of cultural attitudes.

This is a bit of a stretch. I promise you that Ed Witten knows more about friction than you do.

PS: Read this as a continuation of the previous comment. I don’t know why this part got snipped off there.

What saddens me (and probably Mark and the others too) is not so much the fact that a Harvard professor is unaware of these things, but the fact that usually non-scientists (yes, even academics and professors of other disciplines) are not just unaware of basic physics, but actually proud of it. It’s displayed as a kind of look-I-don’t-know-any-physics-ergo-I’m-not-a-geek label.

I completely agree with George (#6), that social scientists face the opposite problem. The biggest reason for both of these is partially the inability to communicate their ideas on the part of research scholars, but also simply due to public apathy when it comes to anything that could not act as fodder for a tabloid.

I think that although I agree with the opinions of most fellow Physicists that this ignorance of the lay people is quite sad and needs to be rectified, I think that it is very important to not give the impression of patronising them. It should be effectively communicated that some basic scientific & mathematical knowledge is as useful and intellectually rewarding as being able to quote Tennyson or Blake.

How this