Dear Crisis Forum,
It's interesting to speculate on why some science departments are
under threat - there is probably a combination of factors, of which
the main one may be the imposition of a market-like financial model
on internal university finances, which tends to penalize expensive
experimental subjects. My experience of science departments is that
the faculty are more than willing to modernize courses and make them
more varied, and that both science education and science research are
very lively, imaginative and healthy in the UK - despite some
problems with financing and student numbers.
Maybe it is inappropriate to pick out individuals in this
discussion, but the participant Pentcho Valev has been deluging the
mailboxes with fairy tales about a unsurmountable paradoxes in the
theories underlying modern physics, such as relativity theory and
thermodynamics, and linking a supposed coverup by the academic
establishment to the economic difficulties of some science
departments.
I just want to mention that I had a correspondence with Valev a few
months ago in which I asked him to explain in detail what these
paradoxes are. The discussion was quite productive and Valev was very
helpful in providing suitable physics texts on relativity, etc.
However the "paradoxes" that Valev publicizes are often false
paradoxes which are set as exercises for students in order to help
them test and develop their understanding! I had a close look at one
of Valev's relativity "paradoxes" and it does of course disappear
providing that one applies relativity theory correctly. One of the
"paradoxes" even has a worked solution in the relevant textbook,
which has not prevented Valev from still claiming that this paradox
threatens the entire framework of modern science!
I point this matter out simply to make the forum members more wary of
claims that there is a supposed crisis in science as a sound subject.
There are certainly many crises in the world, but we will need the
help of science to resolve them, and calling science into question
goes nowhere. It's what we do with science that is worthy of
discussion.
yours
malcolm
--
*****************************************************
Malcolm Levitt
School of Chemistry
Room 27:2025
University of Southampton
Southampton SO17 1BJ
England.
tel. +44 23 8059 6753
fax: +44 23 8059 3781
mobile: +44 77 6652 2964
email: [log in to unmask]
website: http://www.mhl.soton.ac.uk
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
******************************************************
|
