Readers Respond About Arrogance, Confidence, Brilliance, Humility, and Stupidity

Hats off to J. Murray Gibson for his Opinion piece, “Arrogance—A Dangerous Weapon of the Physics Trade?” ( Physics Today, February 2003, page 54 ). Arrogance is indeed a virus that infects the physics community, and I’ve seen its insidious effects on the career choices of generations of students, particularly women and other underrepresented groups.

But one thing about the piece puzzles me. Although Gibson’s main point is that arrogance creates problems, his article repeatedly makes positive claims about arrogance: It is “a prized commodity,” “something to be nurtured,” or even “a tool… [for] cutting through the misconceptions that surround the natural world.” To what effects of arrogance do these quotes refer? The only potentially useful ones I can imagine involve Machiavellian schemes to promote one’s own agenda by simply being nasty. I hope we’re not a profession that promotes that kind of behavior.

On the other hand, perhaps Gibson confuses arrogance with self-confidence. If you want to cut through those misconceptions, a high degree of self-confidence can be very important. But self-confidence need not entail arrogance. The greatest physicists I’ve known have been able to combine strong self-confidence with a concern for others that is the very opposite of arrogance.