Aspiration

[lhexa]

I adore the company of my betters. In fact, I needn't look far to locate such company, for in most activities, among them some very common ones, I rank as an amateur. That they are people who do what I can't, or (more fortunately) do well what I can do poorly, is why my friends continue to be instructive, helpful, fascinating and heartening ones; an imperfect doppelganger of shared interests would not compare. When they are superiors in fields that are distant to my own concerns, appreciating the company requires attentiveness and energy... though sometimes it happens that finding myself in (indeed part of) the purveyance of a foreign, yet vital talent, I shyly let another's desires bypass my own. In contrast, there is the experience of being surrounded by those who excel me in the areas I claim, where appreciating them requires less energy, but more humility. In such company -- and so far it has been rare company, for me -- I feel that a commitment to the aspiration requires a commitment to the people who aspire, and a continuous willingness to let them influence me. The point is not moot: in less than a year I will be in graduate school, among many who are more talented in physics than I am.

So what form could the influence of my peers take, in a style of writing unfamiliar to them? A work useful to students of physics in the way I envision should, I think, be something that could not have been written by anyone other than a student of physics, and a good one at that. That idea alone is enough to assemble a list of attributes which should appear in writing, perhaps even in style: a demonstrable proficiency in all basic physics; an area of expertise, and a concern for the continuing development of the field; an enthusiasm undimmed by the trials of graduate study (or at least rekindled after their passing!); an incorporation of the facts and methods of physics, as well as the terms of criticism and appraisal of the field, into my thoughts themselves... What I really see proceeding from the influence of great physics students, however, is something more: I imagine a person, an impossible person, so thorough in his mastery of physics that the entire content of the field is rich material for analogy, humor, fantasy, argument, and especially metaphor. I want to write as my hypothetical better could write.

Well, for that I have my more wakeful moments; I have that better self who lives beyond the day in which he writes. A greater part of my time will be given to less grand objectives, most immediately in ensuring that no hidden motivation survives encysted within my personality; for instance, the belief that I would make a better philosopher than physicist. The one-sided conflict between physics and philosophy, namely the contempt of great physicists for philosophy, is an unfortunate but not unfair one: physics is, in a sense, philosophy's failure, the development that proved philosophy to be undeserving of a dominant position in human knowledge. The contempt -- and perhaps with it the inept philosophy of many physicists, and an awareness of the ignorant physics of many philosophers -- will soon enough be internalized in me. I am sure that the conflict must find an internal resolution, one without a predetermined victor, before I can venture, in writing, a new contact between the two fields.

Comments

[loiosh-de-talto.livejournal.com]

Shared experience is the tapestry of wit. It is a common thing that few understand beyond the instinctive delight of being among friends.

Physics and Philosophy are not conflicting lines of thought. Rather Physics is the How and Philosophy is the Why. I believe the greatest science and discovers will lie with those who have crossed many disciplines and let not the rules of one compel their beliefs.

Oh, you also have nice legs.

[loiosh-de-talto.livejournal.com]

discoveries.

Or greatest scientists and their discovers. Darn English and its inability to be silly German-flexible.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

You may have misread what I wrote. I've yet to meet a person whom I liked because of shared experiences; mine have been too peculiar.

Also, it would be indulgent of me to take such an idealized view of the two fields, having as I do experience with both. I do acknowledge the worth of mixing domains of knowledge, though.

...Thanks.

[loiosh-de-talto.livejournal.com]

Not that you like or do not like. Shared experiences make for more delightful humor between friends. I, telling a joke about one of our meets, would mean nothing to someone who had not been to one.

Teasing you about couches, for instance.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Ah, I misunderstood.