[lbo-talk] Re: Scientistism

jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net
Tue Oct 10 19:31:45 PDT 2006


On 10 Oct 2006 at 9:24, andie nachgeborenen wrote:


> In my opinion, someone without the math can understand
> the physics (pop biolog, etc.) only as well as a blind
> person can understand painting. There's a reason you
> have to put this stuff in math language to make it go.
> That doeesn't mean ppopular translation out of math
> isn't possible for general interest purposes. Of
> course I have the bias of having made the commitmebt
> to lerarn the math at great personal cost, which I
> have now all forgotten -- the math, not the costs.

This is terribly overstated. Most popular books on physics contain very minimal math. Your contention is that after reading such books people will have no greater understanding of physics than a blind person has of a painting, which is effectively saying they have absolutely no understanding. A blind person has literally zero appreciation for a painting or print. I'm both a painter and sculpture and I think your analogy works better if you substitute sculpture for painting. A blind person can get a very good idea overall of a sculpture but of course will have no appreciation for how the light plays on the surface or how effectively the patina works with a specific composition. They get the gross features but miss the details. You contradict your analogy by saying math isn't necessary for general interest popular translations.

Without a doubt to deeply understand physics requires extensive math skills but I disagree that it is required to even appreciate most of it. I am horrible at math yet managed to get very high grades in physics at University. I have a brother working on his Ph.D. in mathematics and a brother with a Ph.D. in physics. I have had many conversations with them on this subject and feel that if you can find someone who truly understands physics they can explain a great deal of it to "non-math" people using almost no equations. People who cannot explain it well in simplified language do not truly understand the subject in my opinion even if they do understand the math.

John Thornton



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list