Word: holton
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Physicists have historically been the most politically active group in science, and their recent voting patterns show that it is still true. Holton attributes this pattern to physics' natural link with philosophy. "Physics after a while stops standing on its own and starts asking the unanswerable questions -- what is time? what is space? Eventually a physicist has to start asking -- what can I know? what can I do? He has to look beyond his own science for the answers. More applied scientists can find immediate answers to their questions in their test tubes from...
...surprising that Holton divides his teaching time between straight history and philosophy of science. (He also holds an appointment in the History of Science Department and is chairman of the Committee on Physics and Chemistry, a small department which graduates proportionately more summas than any other in the college.) Holton's Harvard Ph.D. advisor and mentor, Nobel laureate P. W. Bridgman '04, made some of the same combinations. "He showed me that you can be both, that physics can be a basis for philosophy," Holton recalls. Holton's own field is an area of physics which has relatively fewer researchers...
...work is supported largely by a grant from the Office of Naval Research. Myths about federal direction of basic research are another cause for lay suspicion of science, Holton thinks. But he notes that at Harvard, government relations have never been a major problem. For one thing, Harvard never contracts for classified government research; for another, "Harvard antedates the federal government, and they know that we could say no to their terms if we wanted to, and still survive...
Until last year, Holton was on one of the advisory panels of the National Science Foundation, which in 1963 called 40 physicists from across the country to Washington to discuss the decreasing number of students taking physics courses. NSF asked the scientists to submit some solutions to the problem. Holton's proposal, the one that was accepted, became a new introductory physics course called Harvard Project Physics. It involves 30 physicists throughout the U.S. and is being tried out for the first time this fall by 2600 students in various forms in colleges, junior colleges, and high schools...
This project, too, is an experiment; as with his gen ed course, Holton is reluctant to issue mid-term progress reports. "We always want to leave open the option to say, at the end, that we failed," he says. "But I think we're on the right track." The new course, he says, tries to focus on "the basic and beautiful ideas of physics, to show why anybody -- I mean everybody -- should take them seriously...