A Mind Over Matter (2021)

Some years ago, I found myself tasked with writing an obituary for P. W. Anderson, the legendary condensed matter theorist. It gave me an opportunity to read More and Different: Notes from a Thoughtful Curmudgeon (2011), an expansive collection of essays authored by him on science, philosophy, and politics. I made a note, then, to return to his work, but never did so sincerely.

I was happy, therefore, to read that Andrew Zangwill, author of Modern Electrodyamics (2012), wrote a biography of Anderson that was published only a few years ago. Zangwill opens his biography with Weinberg and Anderson’s testimonies to the US Senate on the question of whether to continue funding the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC). He writes:

Many particle physicists blamed the demise of the SSC on the testimony and lobbying skill of the outspoken Anderson. He had broken ranks and given public voice to a dispute best handled quietly within the family of physicists.

The acrimony between “low-energy” and “high-energy” theory which no doubt has its origins in this episode, is alive and well in Indian academia. It is reflected in popular attitudes, evinced by careless remarks, and is baked into graduate training. I am reminded, here, of the following remark by G. R. G. Mure in his An Introduction to Hegel (1940):

The plain man has never quite succeeded in seeing in the quarrels of philosophers the symptom of a free and healthy speculative activity. In that there is nothing surprising; but if he should come to suspect that philosophers are beginning to understand each other so ill as to make an intelligent dispute no longer possible, then his customary charge of futility would become more difficult to answer.

Much the same could be said of us.