Over the last several years, I have consistently written that a shortcoming of our higher education system is that many, many students go all the way through a bachelor’s degree without having studied anything difficult such as Calculus, Chemistry, Statistics and Physics. It is my position that the rigor of thinking and hard work required to get through those classes is beneficial in any field of study. That being said, some try to justify sophomoric in areas outside of their area of expertise (e.g. Philosophy, Sociology and Theology) based on their mastery of complex material in totally unrelated hard sciences.
The following is from an article at Scientific American, not often a wildly objective source on subjects like these, but I really liked it. I recommend you read the whole thing. It is a quote from George F. R. Ellis that address the issue of a physicist from Arizona State University known for making buffoonish remarks about Philosophy. Ellis, a “physicist-mathematician-cosmologist” of renown, in responds here to a good question asked by the author of the article, John Horgan.
Horgan: Lawrence Krauss, in A Universe from Nothing, claims that physics has basically solved the mystery of why there is something rather than nothing. Do you agree?
Ellis: Certainly not. He is presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence out of a pre-existing complex of entities, including variational principles, quantum field theory, specific symmetry groups, a bubbling vacuum, all the components of the standard model of particle physics, and so on. He does not explain in what way these entities could have pre-existed the coming into being of the universe, why they should have existed at all, or why they should have had the form they did. And he gives no experimental or observational process whereby we could test these vivid speculations of the supposed universe-generation mechanism. How indeed can you test what existed before the universe existed? You can’t.
Thus what he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true. Well, you can’t get any evidence about what existed before space and time came into being. Above all he believes that these mathematically based speculations solve thousand year old philosophical conundrums, without seriously engaging those philosophical issues. The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality.
And above all Krauss does not address why the laws of physics exist, why they have the form they have, or in what kind of manifestation they existed before the universe existed (which he must believe if he believes they brought the universe into existence). Who or what dreamt up symmetry principles, Lagrangians, specific symmetry groups, gauge theories, and so on? He does not begin to answer these questions.
It’s very ironic when he says philosophy is bunk and then himself engages in this kind of attempt at philosophy. It seems that science education should include some basic modules on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, and the other great philosophers, as well as writings of more recent philosophers such as Tim Maudlin and David Albert.
Betty Blonde #144 – 02/03/2009
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.
I am starting to believe Kelly’s and Christian’s hyperbole–North Carolina State University might be the best undergraduate institution in the world. Leave to the Chicks on the Right to give it just the right spin in this article on their website. Four guys at NCSU invented a fingernail polish that changes color when it comes into contact with what is commonly known as a “date rape drug.” Kelly and Christian have a good friend with whom they hung out every day in the NCSU undergraduate math lounge. How cool is that, NCSU has an undergraduate math lounge. This buddy’s brother is also a friend of the kids and the second guy from the right in the photo that accompanies this post.
My buddy Troy posted this picture on Facebook. He took it a store called 
I have an old friend who has recently retired and moved from Oregon to the island of Samos in Greece. He has started a 
Christian went through graduation last fall, but was required to take a summer class to finish his Mathematics Honors requirements. He did that and so his final NCSU transcript is now complete. Here is his Honors certificate along with a nice medal that came with it. His official diploma will arrive in the mail sometime before early October. In addition to the Honors designation, his transcripts and, eventually, his diploma show that he graduates Summa Cum Laude. His first technical project for his PhD started this week and classes start next week, so he really is diving into higher academic life. Probably the best sign of that was the big chunk of fees they unexpectedly took out of his first scholarship check. It that is not academia, I do not know what is.
