Thursday, May 31, 2007

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

3 comments:

Laura, Queen of Mars said...

Makes intuitive sense to me.

I consider myself a writer/communicator, but I've never had a paralyzing fear of math or quantitative stuff the way a lot of English-major types do. I think it's because of exactly what you're describing: I can sense there's a body of knowledge that's ultimately learnable, or at least definable.

One thing that probably contributes to the situation is that schools tend to lump a whole lot of completely different things together under the labels "science" and "math." I hated hated hated algebra (and my algebra teacher), so it was a huge surprise to find out I liked geometry and trig.

And then there was the biology & evolution class at U of C. The professor wanted us to memorize all the names of the bones that have ever been dug up by archaeologists, and I basically refused to apply my brain to that. Why bother, I thought, because tomorrow they'll dig up another bone that blows all their theories and categories out of the water.
No math at all in that class, and I would argue not much science either. More like storytelling.

At least for nonscientists, it's easy to say they're afraid of math or science, when they mean they had a bad experience with a very specific part of the field.

Erin Sheldon said...

I also think people hate algebra partly because it is taught kind of like your B&A class: memorize these rules and do some meaningless problems. I remember I used to ask questions in algebra like: why does that work? and everyone got annoyed with me, including the teacher. But that is the interesting part, why things work.

I think you are right that one good or bad teacher can make a difference; I had a bad chemistry teacher in college and decided I hated chemistry. I bet if I went back and looked at it now I would see it differently.

mollishka said...

Interesting. As someone who "gets" math, I completely do not understand why so many people fear it. But then, it also irritated me in college when people with technical majors would complain so bitterly about humanities classes. But I agree that in more complex scientific fields, like biology, when they do get the chance to sue math, it's scarily complex and nasty (chaos, anyone?) instead of the safe and secure analytic results we in physics have become accostomed to.