STS3301 Paper Week 13

Response to readings for STS 3301.

On history's battles

I will use Kevles
to disagree with Kevles
on US physics

On isolation

One thing not to do:
Put all your eggs in one basket.
Even if it's Texas.

On why I went to Cornell to study physics and chemistry:

Chemistry textbook,
sidebar on the SSC,
I wanted a role.

Diversification of the curriculum is necessary for training. That diversification must include a weaning, as in Laughlin's example of electrical engineering students "no longer required to learn the laws of electricity." (p. 208) So, the pursuit of science or engineering, split by Laughlin between parts and systems supposedly can be redirected by adjusting the measure of parts or systems in the curriculum.

Are the organizational laws really the children of the microscopic and mechanical laws? Isn't the family relationship more like a marriage, wed by Maxwell, Boltzmann, and grudgingly Schrödinger? Has Laughlin studied the history of statistics any further than I have, or am I misinterpreting the taming of chance?

Reading Anderson after Kevles and Rhodes, I mostly think of anti-reductionism as a defense of scientists who do not work on cosmogony and particle physics, logic and math, against a claim that their work is less important, or, more practically, less deserving of funding. Leave it to an article published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science to claim a homestead not only for scientists at all levels but for inter-level work also.

Anderson claims that each level of complexity in his hierarchy of science requires its own resources that are intuitive for the workers on that level. On a solution of nuclear structure: "it was simply an inspiration, based, to be sure, on everyday intuition, which suddenly fitted everything together." (p. 395) Compare this to Wise's presentation of William Thomson's two-sphere problem of 1845. (<bib>Wise:1989</bib> pp. 263-266) The resources, according to Wise, are brought to the science, "focusing" a social guiding light on a technical problem. The actor chooses from among the possible explanations, co-creating a discourse with other scientists using and guiding common language.

In his 1995 preface, Kevles claims much the social power of physics came from the "identification of physics with National Security." (p. ix) Did physicists squander that political capital, or did it merely run out its limited life? "Angry opposition" is the case for the former, ties to economics probably the case for the latter. The current most lauded work on Cornell's synchrotron is the Energy Recovering Linac, in many physicists' minds adding to the synchrotron something like the regenerative braking of a hybrid car, making their work more socially relevant.

Kevles' multiple uses of the rare word 'adumbrate,' Latinate of 'foreshadow,' express his regard of history as not just a way to understand the past, but to understand the present and to foresee the future. (p. xii) Is that too much to ask of history? I'm not even convinced as much as he seems to hope of the significance of the parallels between post-civil-war earth science and post-WWII physics. Yes, the importance of the "urban industrial order" overshadowed "dirt science". So, what might the parallel be in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Bush the First recession, or the Johnson-Nixon recession of the late 60s and early 70s? No, Kevles offers the evidence himself that what was different was the new dependence on federal dollars. That dependence seems so important that I would hesitate to give as much weight to the parallelism.

An alternative explanation for the demise of the SSC, as itself and as a representation of American big phyics, was Lederman's play towards patriotism. Tying the work to patriotism left it up to the whims of national politics. After the cold-war stand down, American physicists could have done better to steer a more international course. But perhaps there was no one left in physics that wasn't steeped in Cold War patriotism. Einstein and Bohr, gone. Young Los Alamos physicists, retiring. The sense of America's international relations had no humility anymore. Reagan said "tear down this wall" and it seemed to many that the order was taken.

So, not only did the state bring down physics when lowering funding, physics brought itself down by trying to keep up with the state's desires. Irony: By stoking a cold war arms race in high energy particle physics, physicists destroyed the balance of national to international pursuits that kept the taxpayers from passing judgement on their work.

Ah, but then Kevles puts forward that same alternative, on page xxiv, discussing how physicists were loath to political engagement with 'pure science.'

But, if Kevles wants to draw a parallel to 1890s science, where is the reference to Augustus Rowland and his plea for pure science? Kevles mentions the plea at the end of chapter 3, but why not in this preface? It would be nice to mention it in the part about the fight between who was more useful, and who was more fundamental, condensed matter or high energy.

Readings

<bib>Laughlin:2005</bib>

<bib>Dyson:1979</bib>

<bib>Anderson:1972</bib>

<bib>Kevles:1995</bib>