4 ms·
It’s true of any profession. Most people only learn the exact skills they need for their very specific job. If you ask them about anything slightly out of the w
by zeroonetwothree 4y ago
It’s true of any profession. Most people only learn the exact skills they need for their very specific job. If you ask them about anything slightly out of the way they won’t know. (Some people are exceptions of course)
I think it’s one of the downsides of economic specialization. Although the upsides probably outweigh it substantially.
- tom-thistime 4y agoI don't think Heisenberg was necessarily a narrow specialist, trained for just one job. He was one of the inventors of a whole new theory of mechanics.
- bowsamic 4y agoWhy would that imply he wasn't a narrow specialist?
- mannykannot 4y agoThere is a very real sense that what he was a 'specialist' in was figuring out what's fundamental to all of physics - so not so narrow.
- bowsamic 4y agoWell yeah but that is more of a coincidence that he happened to be a specialist in something with wide effects. QM had implications far beyond just those fundamentals, but I would imagine that he would not have known much about those fields that QM ended up having an effect on. For example, did he know much about optics, which was one of the fields most heavily affected by QM? The widespread impact of your field and the specificity of actually working in your field are two very different things.
- mannykannot 4y agoCoincidence?
- bowsamic 4y agoMeaning that he happened to work on something that had widespread effect, he didn’t plan for it. It was luck that quantum mechanics was so successful
- mannykannot 4y agoI think it is clear that Heisenberg, Sommerfeld, Born and others at the forefront of theoretical physics at the time were well aware of how important and far-reaching the issues that comprised Heisenberg's real work were. As explained in the article, his diversion into hydrodynamics was purely to secure a doctorate from a physics establishment which had not yet caught up to this fact, and I would say that, if anything, it is this establishment which suffered a surfeit of narrow specializations.
- bowsamic 4y agoThat isn’t at all clear to me as a physicist Are you a physicist?
- mannykannot 4y agoSo you think your being a physicist gives you special insight into whether Sommerfeld, Born and Heisenberg understood the significance of what they were working on? Explain.
- bowsamic 4y agoYes, of course. I am an expert in physics, you are not...
- 4y ago