Open Letter to: Harry Kroto FRS
Copy to: Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, Athene Donald FRS, Martin Taylor FRS, Lorna Casselton FRS
Dear Dr. Kroto:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/may/22/highereducation.education
Harry Kroto: "The wrecking of British science....The scientific method is based on what I prefer to call the inquiring mindset. It includes all areas of human thoughtful activity that categorically eschew "belief", the enemy of rationality. This mindset is a nebulous mixture of doubt, questioning, observation, experiment and, above all, curiosity, which small children possess in spades. I would argue that it is the most important, intrinsically human quality we possess, and it is responsible for the creation of the modern, enlightened portion of the world that some of us are fortunate to inhabit. Curiously, for the majority of our youth, the educational system magically causes this capacity to disappear by adolescence.....Do I think there is any hope for UK? I am really not sure."
What can be done? The answer is simple: Science should be made intelligible and logical; then, once it is intelligible and logical, there will always be people finding it curious and developing "the inquiring mindset". A few years ago my "biographer" Athel Cornish-Bowden
http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/valevfaq.htm suddenly realized this and drastically changed allegiance:
http://www.beilstein-institut.de/bozen2004/proceedings/CornishBowden/CornishBowden.htm
Athel Cornish-Bowden: "The concept of entropy was introduced to thermodynamics by Clausius, who deliberately chose an obscure term for it, wanting a word based on Greek roots that would sound similar to "energy". In this way he hoped to have a word that would mean the same to everyone regardless of their language, and, as Cooper [2] remarked, he succeeded in this way in finding a word that meant the same to everyone: NOTHING. From the beginning it proved a very difficult concept for other thermodynamicists, even including such accomplished mathematicians as Kelvin and Maxwell; Kelvin, indeed, despite his own major contributions to the subject, never appreciated the idea of entropy [3]. The difficulties that Clausius created have continued to the present day, with the result that a fundamental idea that is absolutely necessary for understanding the theory of chemical equilibria continues to give trouble, not only to students but also to scientists who need the concept for their work."
Cambridge professor John Barrow was also quite honest in a publication in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v433/n7023/full/433218a.html
John Barrow: "EINSTEIN RESTORED FAITH IN THE UNINTELLIGIBILITY OF SCIENCE. Everyone knew that Einstein had done something important in 1905 (and again in 1915) but almost nobody could tell you exactly what it was. When Einstein was interviewed for a Dutch newspaper in 1921, he attributed his mass appeal to the mystery of his work for the ordinary person: "Does it make a silly impression on me, here and yonder, about my theories of which they cannot understand a word? I think it is funny and also interesting to observe. I am sure that it is the mystery of non-understanding that appeals to them...it impresses them, it has the colour and the appeal of the mysterious."
Finally, note that Truesdell characterizes thermodynamics as "a dismal swamp of obscurity" and "a prime example to show that physicists are not exempt from the madness of crowds" whereas Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa and Uffink regard the law of entropy increase as a red herring:
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
"The Second Law made its appearance in physics around 1850, but a half century later it was already surrounded by so much confusion that the British Association for the Advancement of Science decided to appoint a special committee with the task of providing clarity about the meaning of this law. However, its final report (Bryan 1891) did not settle the issue. Half a century later, the physicist/philosopher Bridgman still complained that there are almost as many formulations of the second law as there have been discussions of it (Bridgman 1941, p. 116). And even today, the Second Law remains so obscure that it continues to attract new efforts at clarification. A recent example is the work of Lieb and Yngvason (1999)......The historian of science and mathematician Truesdell made a detailed study of the historical development of thermodynamics in the period 1822-1854. He characterises the theory, even in its present state, as 'a dismal swamp of obscurity' (1980, p. 6) and 'a prime example to show that physicists are not exempt from the madness of crowds' (ibid. p. 8).......Clausius' verbal statement of the second law makes no sense.... All that remains is a Mosaic prohibition ; a century of philosophers and journalists have acclaimed this commandment ; a century of mathematicians have shuddered and averted their eyes from the unclean.....Seven times in the past thirty years have I tried to follow the argument Clausius offers....and seven times has it blanked and gravelled me.... I cannot explain what I cannot understand.....This summary leads to the question whether it is fruitful to see irreversibility or time-asymmetry as the essence of the second law. Is it not more straightforward, in view of the unargued statements of Kelvin, the bold claims of Clausius and the strained attempts of Planck, to give up this idea? I believe that Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa was right in her verdict that the discussion about the arrow of time as expressed in the second law of the thermodynamics is actually a RED HERRING."
Whether or not thermodynamics is "a dismal swamp of obscurity" is the relatively smaller problem; the BIG PROBLEM is that NOBODY CARES. In my view, it is this "NOBODY CARES" that makes the death of science irreversible:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/22/schools.g2
"We are nearing the end of the "World Year of Physics", otherwise known as Einstein Year, as it is the centenary of his annus mirabilis in which he made three incredible breakthroughs, including special relativity. In fact, it was 100 years ago yesterday that he published the most famous equation in the history of physics: E=mc2. But instead of celebrating, physicists are in mourning after a report showed a dramatic decline in the number of pupils studying physics at school. The number taking A-level physics has dropped by 38% over the past 15 years, a catastrophic meltdown that is set to continue over the next few years. The report warns that a shortage of physics teachers and a lack of interest from pupils could mean the end of physics in state schools. Thereafter, physics would be restricted to only those students who could afford to go to posh schools. Britain was the home of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Paul Dirac, and Brits made world-class contributions to understanding gravity, quantum physics and electromagnetism - and yet the British physicist is now facing extinction. But so what? Physicists are not as cuddly as pandas, so WHO CARES IF WE DISAPPEAR?"
I will post this Open Letter on a few internet forums.
Best regards,
Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com