bonerjamz 04
All American
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I think the best job in the world must be that of theoretical physicist. Sure, you have a decade or more of mathematics and science schooling and then years of toiling in obscurity (unless you’re one of the few star physicists who, say, invent a nuclear bomb or rely on a motorized wheelchair) but, after that, you’re golden.
In Mel Brooks’ 2,000-year-old-man sketch, from before the days a diabolical cadre of physicists and engineers gave us the television, Brooks talks about common professions “in the old days.”
Looking at the ground, that was a good job, he says, or looking at the sky, or looking at each other. That was light work, looking at each other. I’d put theoretical physics in that category, too.
I just imagine how a budding theoretical physicist makes his or her career choice. “Well, I want a job with no heavy lifting, where wearing white after Labor Day is not frowned upon and where I get to look at the world without actually engaging in it. Let’s see, philosophy or theoretical physics? Well, I’m pretty good with numbers, so theoretical physics it is.”
Do actual physicists thumb their nose at theoretical physicists? “We don’t deal in theory buddy, we deal with hard facts. Go jump in a black hole — oh, wait, they only exist in theory.”
The theoretical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, clearly a man with a lot of time on his hands, wrote about three worlds and three mysteries. The first world is the world of the physical, of chairs and tables and coffee mugs. The second world is the world of the mind, where emotion and thought is found (along with, I assume, guilt and envy). The third world is the world of mathematics — the world of numbers and algorithms (the world my 10-year-old daughter, Miriam, most hates).
The three mysteries explain how the three worlds relate, or try to. Somehow, Penrose suggests, the world of the mind was born out of the world of the physical (mystery one), the world of mathematics came out of the world of the mind (mystery two) and somehow, the world of mathematics provides an explanation for the world of the physical.
Hey, go get a real job, Roger. They actually pay you for dreaming that stuff up?
Anyway, Penrose got it wrong. The three worlds are as follows: The world in which I’m right about everything, the world in which you’re wrong about everything and the world in which I don’t give you an answer at all.
At least that’s what I tell my kids.
My own three mysteries are: Why isn’t fat considered good looking on a man; why do I have to lose my hair; and when will Angelina Jolie acknowledge my existence. Not as deep as old Penrose’s worlds and mysteries but much more practical.
Anyway, it seems to me the problem is that theoretical physics has some sort of love-hate relationship with practical application. They want to figure out how to do things like, oh, I don’t know, harness the immense and unstoppable power of the atom and then whine when the Enola Gay starts revving her engines. Oh, you didn’t mean for Hiroshima to be destroyed in the blink of an eye? Well then, maybe you shouldn’t have gotten any chalk on the coat in the first place. If you didn’t want your theoretical physics perverted to develop machines of war, perhaps you should have been a fisherman instead, or a piano mover.
I would love it if some theoretical physicists out there would put their considerable intelligence toward helping the world out, instead of just lying around daydreaming all the time.
Hey, take your eyes off the telescope, pal, we’ve got a few problems down here, you know. There’s a huge oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, for instance. Maybe you’ve heard?
But, oh no, they’ve got to plumb the mysteries of the universe. Maybe that’ll do some good in, say, a millennium or two.  6/1/2010 9:16:33 PM
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