Re: What it takes to be a revolutionary thinker

From: Gregory L. Hansen (glhansen_at_steel.ucs.indiana.edu)
Date: 03/11/05 

Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 15:12:50 +0000 (UTC)

In article <f57171c7.0503101419.3cc7c713@posting.google.com>,
Zach <zj_45@hotmail.com> wrote:
>"PD" <pdraper@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:<1110391716.864567.112540@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>...

>> The other aspect of this, though, was my alarm at his perception of how
>> Einstein worked, how he did what he did. Few of the everday Einstein
>> fans recall, for example, that the same year he was publishing his
>> seminal papers, he was struggling to get his PhD thesis approved, and
>> he was working at a side job because no one at the university could
>> find money to support him. In this 100th anniversary of some of his
>> singular accomplishments, I think it's worthwhile reminding people
>> about how much hard work, how much formal training, and how much time
>> spent simply learning, went into those accomplishments.
>>
>> PD
>
>Interesting post. But why did you squash him like that?
>Here a teenage kid who is interested in something comes to see an
>expert in the field, on the sound advice of mom who wants to see her
>son go to university, and instead of encouraging his interest you
>explain "reality." He would have learned eventually, everyone does in
>their own way.
>Now, is he actually going to apply to a physics program? Go to
>university at all? Sure he was being idealistic and naive, he's only
>a kid. You had the chance to sell him on a physics degree, or at least
>encourage him to go to university, and to me it sounds like you blew
>it.

I've lost patience with the unexamined assumption that we must work to
swell the ranks of the physics programs. Surely that's a good thing for
the professors who need a strong department, not to mention grad students
and post docs to do their work. But the employment picture for physicists
looks less like that painted by the American Physical Society and more
like that painted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the new federal
budget will do nothing to change that. Declining enrollment in physics
programs is market forces doing what they're supposed to do.

If the kid doesn't make it into physics on his own, he'd be better off
somewhere else. But the converse is not necessarily true. 

-- 
"You're not as dumb as you look.  Or sound.  Or our best testing
indicates."  -- Monty Burns to Homer Simpson

Relevant Pages

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