The relevance of physics
DOI: 10.1063/1.3021828
What reasons are there for thinking physics to be of basic importance? What is the present relevance of science? There are at least five parts to a complete answer. I want to sketch these here, in a frankly didactic manner, in a way that might make sense to an earnest, beginning student. (He will also see some worrisome aspects of the present state of science, but it is not my purpose to rehearse those here.) That questions about “relevance” have in the last few years become almost clichés does not change the need to be clear about the subject; we shall attack it head on.
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References
1. A. Einstein, Festschrift für Aurel Stodola, Orell Füssli Verlag, Zürich (1929) page 126.
2. J. Kepler to Herwart von Hohenberg.
3. V. Weisskopf, Bull. Am. Soc. Arts and Scis. 24, no. 1, 8, Oct 1970.
4. I. I. Rabi, The Physics Teacher 5, no. 5, 197, (1967).
More about the authors
Gerald Holton, Harvard University.
