Physics and Science

My personal story, childhood and education. Curiosity and puzzle-solving. Why fundamental physics? The ontological questions. Purpose of human life, purpose of my life. Practical benefits and drawbacks of being a physicist. Laymen's view of research in fundamental physics.

What versus how. Math as a language. Concepts of truth and correctness in Nature. The experiment. Plato, world of ideas, discovery versus invention. Approximate versus exact, psychological consequences. Motivation, taste, judging what is important, having a philosophical context. The boundary line, mathematical physics. Prejudices in the two communities.

Target object of research, classification of sciences, scaling and complexity. What does "fundamental" science mean? Exact sciences versus descriptive sciences, reasons for/against the usage of math. Difference between physics and engineering. Scientists and inventors.

Darwin, natural selection, genetic features. Incompleteness of the evolution models. The parent of a human is human, the ancestor of a human is an "ape". DNA crossing and mutation. The number of possible outcomes, total phase space of life-forms. Time required for random evolution from a bunch of aminoacids in water to a DNA of a human body. Initial condition selection, and dynamics of evolution. What is "driving" the evolution?

Model building and data gathering. Artist and critic, imagination and reality. The insight of theory, concept of understanding. The power of experiment, facts. Theoretical framework versus a concrete theory, the issue of string theory. Observation versus experiment, the issue of astrophysics. The "experimental desert" in high-energy physics. Dilution of physics into math.

"I do not need to learn theory of relativity to know that it is wrong." ... Q: "What is this $c$ in $E=mc^2$ ?" A: "It is the speed of light." Q: "Okay, and what is the $c^2$ then?" A: "It is the square of the speed of light." ... "I can make gravity from electrostatics." ... "There is a conspiracy of Jews to hold back novel scientific ideas." ... "My theory is too complicated for anyone else to understand." ... "The number $\pi$ is not equal to $3.14$." ... And so on... :-)

Energy, modern civilization and equilibrium with the environment. The fundamental sources of energy on Earth. Fossil fuels dryout problem. Concepts of nuclear energy, fuel, waste and byproducts. Safety, predictability of environmental conditions. Nuclear waste storage and long-term effects. "What now" versus "what in 10 000 years". Ethics of a generation in a long-term perspective.

...in physics and science...