Know-why Vs Know-how
The creative urge
Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Bohr, Heisenberg, Einstein, Landau, Fermi, Feynman are known as physicists and Leibnitz, Gauss, Minkowski, Hilbert, Neumann are recognized more as mathematicians than physicists. Inspite of their great contributions to physics, rather indirectly, the letter group contributed through the development of mathematical formalism. Another distinction is made between physics and technology where the first is concerned with the 'know-why' inspired by the creative urge and pure curiosity and the second is the search for know-how guided by innovative skill to fulfill the practical necessities of life. These two activities were quite independent of each other in their initial undeveloped stages. Physics also in its mechanistic and primitive stage of classical age was district from humanistic subjects and social sciences, because physics was considered objective and quantitative knowledge of inanimate nature while most of humanistic subjects like philosophy, literature and social sciences were considered as subjective and qualitative and as such arbitrary. Thus before modern physics with its two great pillars namely the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics evolved, there were much unexplored and impenetrable territories of knowledge constituting the boundaries between physics and other disciplines. The revolutionary changes brought about by the physicists in the last hundred years through their discovery of new tools, both theoretical and experimental, to explore the territories separating physics from other disciplines have created new challenges, and new possibilities of unification. The boundaries set by size, energy, choice of subject area or methodology used to define the domain of physics are now all crossed or tunnel. The physicists have solved the puzzle of Hydrogen molecule, mapped the depth of the proton, redesigned the atomic nucleus, explored the centres of stars, the double helix of the genetic material and the alpha helix of the protein. Physics is now stretching into the infinitely small, infinitely large and infinitely complex.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments