Is Ignorance Essential to Discovering the Mysteries of Physics?

[Loren Booda]

It's bewildering. I earned a Masters degree in physics in 1986, long after scoring an 800 on my Math SATs in high school and studying intensive physics at Yale my freshman year. However, my "Social Quotient" seems to have had overtaken my "Physics Quotient" as I matured. I feel safer studying the person of physicists than the body of physics. A hurricane now marks human need for compassion, rather than an logical outcome of the Coriolis effect.

In my current job I correspond with individuals and families suffering from mental illness, a condition which marked my break from Yale. I am pretty adept communicating at the word processor interpersonally and conversing with non-authoritarians, but as many of you can attest to, my ability to describe physical situations lacks clarity (see http://www.quantumdream.net). I want to achieve innovation, but my Physics Quotient lacks. I now see physics as an beautiful, intriguing and grand puzzle, but somewhat more numerological than higher-mathematical.

What aptitude might I have gained or lost along with my shift of sanity that freshman year at Yale? Is ignorance a necessary part of scientific discovery? Do most physicists actually reconcile social responsibility with their pursuit of the cosmos? Maybe I needed to ground myself where I had taken off - at the constellation of mankind.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Most people (most males anyway) who are happily focussed on a facinating subject, be it physics, baseball, or poetry, tend to suppress thoughts that would take them away from their love and throw them into situations they are not well adapted to. Many specialists seem to have borderline Asperger's syndrome, and don't do well socially.

 

[Loren Booda]

It would seem I have a "reversed Asperger's syndrome," considering those with the condition I have met, talked to and known. My social concern (something usually suppressed in Asperger's) actually interferes with my need to isolate myself in public or study arcane subjects, like "unified theory," both symptomatic of Asperger's.