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This is not that uncommon of an approach. I had a calculus teacher once who pointed out that we, the students, were not being presented with the mathematical p

This is not that uncommon of an approach. I had a calculus teacher once who pointed out that we, the students, were not being presented with the mathematical proofs that underlie calculus, and so had no real way of determining whether what we were being taught was reliable or not, and this was the case for the vast majority of applied mathematics courses. The point was that 'real mathematics' is all a series of theorems and proofs of theorems. The same is true for physics, but there it's the experiments that are mostly taken on faith; who has actually seen particles rebound from the dense inner cores of atoms? Yet we all believe in the structure of the atom as presented in intro physics/chemistry courses. As far as economics, that's more like theological studies than math and physics, so the true / false determination probably just amounts to looking up the relevant passage in the appropriate holy text.

OkayPhysicist 4y ago
A physics undergrad definitely includes most of the most damning experiments in physics. Muon capture for verifying Special Relativity, the photovoltaic and single-photon double slit experiment for Quantum, the spinning mirror thing for measuring the speed of light. You definitely see enough that you don't need to take the models on faith.
- lazide 4y ago
  There is still a lot taken on faith for quite awhile, as the knowledge to judge the accuracy/meaning of each of those is also built on a lot of theories and prior experiments which are not usually personally tested. But Physics as noted is much less so than most everything else.
barry-cotter 4y ago
> As far as economics, that's more like theological studies than math and physics, so the true / false determination probably just amounts to looking up the relevant passage in the appropriate holy text. If your math is adequate to the task (basic calculus) I suggest you check out an intermediate microeconomics textbook like Varian’s or McCloskey’s[1]. Macroeconomics is less firmly anchored but it too is very far from theology. [1] Full text of The Applied Theory of Price http://deirdremccloskey.org/docs/price.pdf http://deirdremccloskey.org/docs/price.pdf

OkayPhysicist 4y ago

A physics undergrad definitely includes most of the most damning experiments in physics. Muon capture for verifying Special Relativity, the photovoltaic and single-photon double slit experiment for Quantum, the spinning mirror thing for measuring the speed of light. You definitely see enough that you don't need to take the models on faith.

lazide 4y ago
There is still a lot taken on faith for quite awhile, as the knowledge to judge the accuracy/meaning of each of those is also built on a lot of theories and prior experiments which are not usually personally tested. But Physics as noted is much less so than most everything else.

barry-cotter 4y ago

> As far as economics, that's more like theological studies than math and physics, so the true / false determination probably just amounts to looking up the relevant passage in the appropriate holy text. If your math is adequate to the task (basic calculus) I suggest you check out an intermediate microeconomics textbook like Varian’s or McCloskey’s[1]. Macroeconomics is less firmly anchored but it too is very far from theology. [1] Full text of The Applied Theory of Price http://deirdremccloskey.org/docs/price.pdf http://deirdremccloskey.org/docs/price.pdf