Simple

I often find myself talking to scientists in other fields and when I tell them I do astrophysics, or physics, they are always impressed. They often say that physics was too hard for them.

This really surprises me, especially coming from people who work in fields like psychology or even biology. I tell them that they have it wrong, that physics is the easiest science and psychology is the hardest. But they always just laugh like I'm joking. Let me explain.

The reason I was drawn to physics is not because it is difficult but because it is so simple. Physics focuses on the simplest and most basic phenomena in the universe because those phenomena can actually be explained and predicted.

When I tell people this they sort of understand, but they always say that even though that might be true the thing that makes it hard is the math. They could have done it if it weren't for the math.

But the fact that I can actually use math in physics is just another reflection of its simplicity. People don't really use math in other fields because the systems they deal with are so complex that there is no way to explain them mathematically yet.

Some concrete examples: One of the first great successes of math in science was gravity. Newton was able to explain the motion of a planet around the sun using an incredibly simple formula for the force of gravity. This is possible partly because the system is so simple: the sun and a planet orbiting it. Compare this to the human brain, a system so complex we are just now mapping out the rough correlations between regions of the brain and observed behavior. Physics tells us how the electrical impulses in the brain work, and this is not much more complex than gravity. But the system of neurons is so complex as to make performance of calculations infeasible.

I understand the fear of math in that it seems strange and disconnected from everyday experience. But it is just a very simple language; it is far simpler than any human verbal language, and it is structured in such a way that everything makes sense and there are no exceptions and few opportunities for confusion. But like any language it is only useful when it is intuitive, and intuition only comes with experience and practice.

In many ways this parallels the misunderstanding people have about physics; it is actually much simpler to learn basic math than to learn Italian. It is partly for this reason we use it in the first place. It is a fairly simple and fool-proof way to tell other people something. And of course we can use it to predict much of the phenomena we see in the universe accurately.

But that simplicity is a drawback when trying to describe a complex system like the brain. Human language is better at that; when I say I am contemplative people have a good idea what I am saying, but how would I say that mathematically? On the other hand description isn't enough, and that is why psychology is so difficult. As a science it cannot truly make predictions, at least yet. Maybe some people go into psych because there is no math but in that case they are doing a disjustice to the field. They should hope that someday they can make predictions.

So that is a rambling attempt to explain myself. I hope it makes some sense.

Erin