Studying physics is like reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy. At first, there is a general excitement about things to come, how the small events at the beginning are going to avalanche into something portentous. Then, there comes the middle section where things get slow and a tad boring, but it's still a section that you have to understand before you can get on to bigger things. And then, there's the finish: spectacular and very memorable.
Things are the same with physics. First, there are the atoms, the hobbits of the physical realm. With them, the molecules, bonds and a wide variety of interactions between different particles. There is enough about their behaviour to stoke one's curiosity, to explore how they interact under different circumstances toward different results. Then, as the basic structure of all materials has been understood, we move on to the universe in which they exist and how they shaped it. That's where things get tricky and, quickly, mindboggling.
At one point, however, all the concepts that are trying to be understood suddenly coalesce into one big, beautiful picture of the universe. There are stars, novae, nebulae and black holes, and diamonds, rubies and emeralds, and light and its millions of colours. This is where the beauty of physics becomes really evident, summoning appreciation and awe at its poignancy. This is also where the audience's focus is while, all the time, the physicist labours in the middle section to understand more, to explore more.
- The Pillars of Creation (one of the most beautiful images from outer space)
A lot of what goes on in the beginning is taught at schools. The foundation is laid such that wheresoever the student's interest lies, he finds himself equipped enough to move ahead confidently in that direction. All of what happens in the middle is locked up in universities, research labs and journals. That is where the core of the scientific community resides, constantly hypothesizing, experimenting, reviewing and publishing. The contents of the spectacular finish is what is circulated in the media: in news reports, TV shows, etc., the stuff that we see even if we don't care to look in the right places.
A book as comprehensive as The Lord of the Rings in its delineation of fantastic plots and sub-plots, of valorous and scheming characters, and of strange places and their stranger legends is bound to become both heavily inspirational and literarily restricting. Since 1955, when the trilogy was first published, there have been hundreds of books that show some sign or the other of the author having borrowed from Tolkien's brainchild. At the same time, many of them experienced only fleeting success simply because they were measured against the scope of the big daddy.
Physics isn't different. Every time there is a revolution - which has been happening less frequently of late because (we think) we're in the vicinity of a Solution to Everything - there is reluctance, reaffirmation, and then reorienting, in that order, of the scientific community. More recent discoveries add more meaning not only to the present but also to the past. Similarly, more recent knowledge is even more significant because the past has aged. As we gradually zero in on something, the more difficult it becomes to think radically, to think way out of the box, because such suggestions are considered abnormal in comparison to something groundbreaking that came before.
- Thomas Kuhn is known for his controversial 1964 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he characterized the now-staple concept of a paradigm as the entity that undergoes rigorous testing before the scientific community can induct a once-anomalous fact.
This phenomenon is something that ought not to be eradicated: it is necessary to weed out the unscalable and the superficial. It is persistence in such an environment that reaps the greatest rewards, even though the idea may sound oddly masochistic.
For example, in the case of Dan Shechtman, whose story was popularized after he won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2011: even though the abrasive interference of Linus Pauling was unfortunate, the atmosphere of doubt was heavy because the conviction of Shechtman's peers got in the way of his immediate success. However, at all other points of time, that conviction is necessary to sustain research.
- Dan Shechtman
This doesn't mean all knowledge in physics follows from what came before it. After all, the only things fixed in nature are the laws of physics, and it is by closely observing them that we begin our first lessons in the subject.
For the next few decades after the 1950s, the spell of The Lord of the Rings over fantasy fiction couldn't easily be broken (check postscript), so pervasive was its influence. Only gradually did writers realize that fantasy fiction is simply what the world is not, and that thought resurrected a treasure-chest of ideas, giving us the pleasurable writing of Steven Erikson, Ursula Le Guin, Terry Goodkind, Stephen Donaldson, Robert Jordan and others.
Analogously, after Albert Einstein formulated his general theory of relativity (GR) and quantum mechanics (QM) was brought up by Schrodinger, Planck, Pauli, Maxwell and others, there was a fallout amongst physicists. The two monumental theories couldn't be reconciled, resulting in academic chaos. It was in such an atmosphere that two factions of radical thought emerged: loop quantum gravity and M-theory (a.k.a. string theory), and neither of them had attempted to work off what was set down in GR or QM. (In fact, through an attempt at reconciliation, these two theories have evolved to explain some of the most fundamental secrets of the universe).
- "A Calabi-Yau manifold is a special type of [smooth surface] that shows up in certain branches of mathematics such as algebraic geometry, as well as in theoretical physics. Particularly in superstring theory, the extra dimensions of spacetime are sometimes conjectured to take the form of a 6-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold." - Wikipedia
Ultimately, the lessons with which we journey into the future of science (or is it already here?) are all encapsulated in the spirit of The Lord of Rings, at least in my opinion. Both the magnum opus and physics have been and are seminal in various ways. Even though the trials and tribulations of Middle Earth may not have been the cause of great relief and healing like physics has, the journey into their causes was a teaching experience nonetheless.
The similarities that I have made a note of are simply empirical and born out of my fondness for both entities, but they are also equally undeniable. For instance, while the division of physics into three "realms" may seem perfunctory to some, it is a good place to begin to understand why what Elsevier Publications is up to is horrible.
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PS:
- "Do you remember [...] The Lord of the Rings? [...] Well, Io is Mordor [...] There's a passage about "rivers of molten rock that wound their way ... until they cooled and lay like dragon-shapes vomited from the tortured earth." That's a perfect description: how did Tolkien know, a quarter of a century before anyone saw a picture of Io? Talk about Nature imitating Art.", Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two, Chapter 16 'Private Line'
- http://www.moongadget.com/origins/lotr.html
- Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons: "How did it influence the D&D game? Whoa, plenty, of course. Just about all the players were huge JRRT fans, and so they insisted that I put as much Tolkien-influence material into the game as possible. Anyone reading this that recalls the original D&D game will know that there were Balrogs, Ents, and Hobbits in it. Later those were removed, and new, non-JRRT things substituted–Balor demons, Treants, and Halflings. Indeed, who can doubt the excellence of Tolkien’s writing? So of course it had a strong impact on A/D&D games." Link: http://www.theonering.net/features/interviews/gary_gygax.html
