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> The extreme example of this problem is in science. Just about nobody in society has actually done any experimental science. This. A thousand times this. It t

> The extreme example of this problem is in science. Just about nobody in society has actually done any experimental science. This. A thousand times this. It takes like three weeks of screwing around to get something remotely valuable, and oftentimes a summary takes just a paragraph that people look at and say, "Well, yeah, duh, that's obvious isn't it?"

mechanical_fish 16y ago
One can't say this enough: After your work is done, you are going to look at it, at the product of years of herculean effort, and you are going to say "Damn! This is completely obvious. How did this take me so much time?" Only then will you truly grok Feynman's joke about mathematicians: "Mathematicians can only prove trivial theorems, because any theorem, once proved, is trivial." (When I first read that at age fifteen or so, it was humor. Now it is dark humor. Still funny, of course, but with richer overtones.) Only then will you understand how James Clerk Maxwell's life work can simultaneously be one of the top ten intellectual feats in the history of mankind and something that most undergraduate physics majors learn in a semester or two.
- banuelios 16y ago
  Do they? I'm not a physicist but I wonder why a friend of mine (PhD in physics @caltech) decided to take a sabbatical and "dedicate a full year" to study Maxwell equations. I'll ask him more about it...
  - mechanical_fish 16y ago
    Oh, I don't mean to say that undergrads finish understanding Maxwell's equations. I took about six semesters' worth of material that basically boiled down to the equations, and I came nowhere near reaching the limit. But it is true that we routinely use the equations to solve problems that were very difficult intellectual struggles for Maxwell. A big problem is that Maxwell was encumbered by his mathematics and notation - everything he did was later refactored to be more straightforward. The dev, grad, curl stuff we use today came later. We have Oliver Heaviside - a man whose name is now more famous from Cats lyrics - to thank for them.
  - cabalamat 16y ago
    Even if it's not true of Maxwell, it's certainly true of Newton.
- adw 16y ago
  A PhD takes about six weeks. Maybe three months. It takes at least three years to work out which six weeks. (I'm speaking from experience.)
- wglb 16y ago
  Well, when we studied maxwell's equations, it seemed (and still does) like a thing of beauty. Completely obvious it is not.

mechanical_fish 16y ago

One can't say this enough: After your work is done, you are going to look at it, at the product of years of herculean effort, and you are going to say "Damn! This is completely obvious. How did this take me so much time?" Only then will you truly grok Feynman's joke about mathematicians: "Mathematicians can only prove trivial theorems, because any theorem, once proved, is trivial." (When I first read that at age fifteen or so, it was humor. Now it is dark humor. Still funny, of course, but with richer overtones.) Only then will you understand how James Clerk Maxwell's life work can simultaneously be one of the top ten intellectual feats in the history of mankind and something that most undergraduate physics majors learn in a semester or two.

banuelios 16y ago
Do they? I'm not a physicist but I wonder why a friend of mine (PhD in physics @caltech) decided to take a sabbatical and "dedicate a full year" to study Maxwell equations. I'll ask him more about it...
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  Oh, I don't mean to say that undergrads finish understanding Maxwell's equations. I took about six semesters' worth of material that basically boiled down to the equations, and I came nowhere near reaching the limit. But it is true that we routinely use the equations to solve problems that were very difficult intellectual struggles for Maxwell. A big problem is that Maxwell was encumbered by his mathematics and notation - everything he did was later refactored to be more straightforward. The dev, grad, curl stuff we use today came later. We have Oliver Heaviside - a man whose name is now more famous from Cats lyrics - to thank for them.
- cabalamat 16y ago
  Even if it's not true of Maxwell, it's certainly true of Newton.
adw 16y ago
A PhD takes about six weeks. Maybe three months. It takes at least three years to work out which six weeks. (I'm speaking from experience.)
wglb 16y ago
Well, when we studied maxwell's equations, it seemed (and still does) like a thing of beauty. Completely obvious it is not.