Well said. 审美价值对大众来说有些玄乎,但是历史上有无数例子都是基础研究远远领先于应用, 貌似没用,但一段时间之后就引发了技术变革。 Wilson 的话完美地体现了应用研究和基础研究的关系。你似乎很重视科学美学,要是 早生几十年,当是 Wilson 的知音,他的建筑美学思想体现在他主导的费米试验室大楼 的设计上。
Let me just leave this discussion with a quote: I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world. -- GH Hardy
【在 A******u 的大作中提到】 : Let me just leave this discussion with a quote: : I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is : likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least : difference to the amenity of the world. : -- GH Hardy
I am not being poetic, nor was Hardy. This is just being honest with what we do, not that I allude to any comparison of Hardy and myself. It is totally fine that you cannot empathize with this sort of honesty. Judge me all you want. The truth is, you don't know me. I don't see anything negative with being 下里巴人.
【在 A******u 的大作中提到】 : Let me just leave this discussion with a quote: : I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is : likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least : difference to the amenity of the world. : -- GH Hardy
i*l
76 楼
我就选了proton therapy 的头条,里边主题内容第一段最后一句话就是 If detected early, prostate cancer has a 5-year survival rate of nearly 99%. 这里边主要讲就是用质子疗法。 当然你可以说晚期了照样治不好,但是晚期癌症的难点在于癌细胞扩散到了不同部位, 并不是因为高能质子轰击不到癌细胞。 说句不好听的话,如果你或者你爸妈被诊断出了癌症,还有三年期限,难道你不愿意有 栗子疗法来治疗?
Please clarify what you mean by useful. Hardy's "useful" means having positive/negative effects on the well-being of people. Creating something useful is the research scope of the Dept of Applied Physics or School of engineering. physicists' job is to discover new phenomena, and the laws governing the motion of the world. In this sense of the word "useful", I can give you many examples of not immediately useful, but beautiful physics - Boltzmann's statistical mechanics was surely not useful when it was just created. It did provide unification of microscopic interaction and macroscopic thermodynamics. Its practical use came much later when techniques were developed to perform calculations on not-so-ideal materials. - Parity violation. Useless till today for what I know. Very important in understanding processes involving weak interactions. - Renormalization group. Who with a practical mind cared about ill-behaved perturbation expansion or Kondo problem? - Path integral. Applicable to real materials only after new algorithms and modern computers are available. - superconductivity. its use came much later.
【在 A******u 的大作中提到】 : Please clarify what you mean by useful. : Hardy's "useful" means having positive/negative effects on the well-being of : people. Creating something useful is the research scope of the Dept of : Applied Physics or School of engineering. physicists' job is to discover new : phenomena, and the laws governing the motion of the world. : In this sense of the word "useful", I can give you many examples of not : immediately useful, but beautiful physics : - Boltzmann's statistical mechanics was surely not useful when it was just : created. It did provide unification of microscopic interaction and : macroscopic thermodynamics. Its practical use came much later when
A*u
86 楼
string theory is ... let's not talk about it. I think we agree on one point. Physics theory should lead to observational verification or falsification. The point I have been making is: physics does not need to be useful in the sense that it leads to immediately to technological improvements. A lot of physics presentations are plagued by a cliche prologue: the world is in grave danger, which arose from a problem related to my research, and so what you will hear is how I am going to save the world ... my a$$
【在 A******u 的大作中提到】 : string theory is ... let's not talk about it. : I think we agree on one point. Physics theory should lead to observational : verification or falsification. : The point I have been making is: physics does not need to be useful in the : sense that it leads to immediately to technological improvements. A lot of : physics presentations are plagued by a cliche prologue: the world is in : grave danger, which arose from a problem related to my research, and so what : you will hear is how I am going to save the world ... my a$$
n*r
88 楼
完全同意。 我们之间没有纷歧。
what
【在 A******u 的大作中提到】 : string theory is ... let's not talk about it. : I think we agree on one point. Physics theory should lead to observational : verification or falsification. : The point I have been making is: physics does not need to be useful in the : sense that it leads to immediately to technological improvements. A lot of : physics presentations are plagued by a cliche prologue: the world is in : grave danger, which arose from a problem related to my research, and so what : you will hear is how I am going to save the world ... my a$$
A*u
89 楼
I am one of 99.9%混事. What I do is for my own amusement.