Re: Social skills and physics

tessel_at_um.bot
Date: 03/09/05 

Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 08:07:08 +0000 (UTC)

On Mon, 7 Mar 2005, Arnold Neumaier wrote:

> tessel@tum.bot wrote
>
>> Such a task does appear to become easier when one tries to understand
>> instead the former thinking of some dead person.
>
> But an advantage is that one can freely speculate without fear of being
> corrected. This may well account for part of the popularity of writing
> about Einstein...

Yes, that is in part just what I was suggesting!

Phillip suggested:

> Look at any photo of a group of physicists which include Einstein. He
> stands out. I think he is literally popular for the same reasons the
> Beatles were. Intentionally or unintentionally, he was a non-conformist
> who drew attention to himself, and thus was much more visible to the
> public than, say, Niels Bohr.

Yes, I'd have to agree that AE's photogenic properties also plays a role.
>From contemporary reporting, it is quite clear that people were weirdly
entranced by, among other things, the goofy hairstyle of AE--- and later,
the Beatles. But clearly Einstein is a more lasting Phenomenon.

> Even if one argues that Einstein was the better scientist, his
> popularity is greater by much more than the greater magnitude of his
> scientific greatness.

Yes, and what I was trying to say is this is apparently true not just for
the general public, but also for historians of science, as a group.

I wrote:

>> Surely I am not the only one who has noticed that in this very
>> newsgroup, while long posts expositing useful mathematical techniques,
>> or discussing subtle physical questions, often pass unremarked, mention
>> of scurrilious topics such as those alluded to in (G) almost always
>> generate substantial threads? (For example, I can confidently predict
>> that (G) is by far the most likely topic to be taken up as a result of
>> this post!)

Arnold commented:

> Yes. The reason is that in a newsgroup, one tends to respond to what one
> understands without delay. If understanding a message or answering it
> takes real study, I (at least) do it only if the topic is close to
> something I would study anyway in the near future. This is the case
> even more so in a newsgroup such as s.p.r., where it needs care to
> write things that are both informative and correct.

I agree that seems likely to be one reason, but I think the one I
suggested is another. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that individual
reasons for exhibiting some behavior need be simple or straightforward.

> .. and, finally, the western civilization over hunter-gatherer societies
> because they had found an even more powerful mode of manipulation:
> science.
>
> Starting with geometry and metallurgy, and followed much later
> by other mathematics and chemistry and by physics, science is now
> the dominating power in the world. Of course only in the hands of
> socially skilled people....

You must have read the book by Jared Diamond which I just recommended in
another derivative thread, huh? :-)

Great book, BTW!

"T. Essel" (adopting some cryptographic coloration of its own)