Physicism

At the Summer 2011 meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers I re-introduced the word 'physicism' to raise the question whether we should have some sort of social bent across physics education, pointing to the analogous 'environmentalism' common among those studying and teaching environmental science.

About environmentalism

I have overgeneralized environmental scientists as all being environmentalists, including in their teaching. There are strands of environmental science pedagogy that eschew activism, rather embracing appreciation and scientific knowledge for its own sake. Workers in these strands might be called 'naturalists' rather than environmentalists.

Perhaps that subtlety could be informative to our consideration of physicism. There might be one subset of physicists who espouse physicism living peacefully with another subset who don't care for activism in their field, both sharing an appreciation for the science itself.