Magnus Borgh

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Magnus Borgh

Magnus Borgh

@SpinVector

Associate Professor of physics (AMO, quantum fluids), keeper of parrots, lover of classical music, and wearer of hats. English & Swedish.

Norwich, England Sumali Mayıs 2011
1.5K Sinusundan953 Mga Tagasunod
Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@okularab Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone who wrote later had more insight or presented it in a way that facilitated any deeper understanding – far from it – but the problem is not any perceived distance from som supposed primary source, but poor pedagogy or own poor understanding.
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@okularab Exactly, and for good reason. And we teach it from texts that have improved on that presentation, written by people with equal or better access to the primary source – the physics itself – as well as the benefit of more theory development than they had.
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
This makes sense when you’re approaching everything from a history mindset, but isn’t how it works in physics. Maxwell’s writings hold no privileged position relative to the physics of electrodynamics compared with treatments that use better tools and 150+ years of understanding
Zena Hitz@zenahitz

This makes sense in theory, but it doesn't jibe with the experience of learning from original sources, where the object of study seems almost always more immediate.

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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@okularab Very good illustrations. Is there value in reading this? Yes, of course. Is it what will give a student the best understanding of the actual physics? No, because we have developed a much better way of describing it since Faraday conducted his experiments.
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Okular AB
Okular AB@okularab·
@SpinVector Another typical passage from his diaries (published by the Royal Society). This is the date of discovery of magneto-optics, of the phenomenon which we today denote ”Faraday effect” or ”Faraday rotation”.
Okular AB tweet media
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@RichardBratby The number of “literary folk” I’ve seen turn their noses up at reading for entertainment … There’s even a substantial subset of film people who seem to take affront at the notion that a perfectly fine purpose – even primary purpose – for a film can be to entertain.
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Richard Bratby
Richard Bratby@RichardBratby·
When literary folk say this it's a joke but in classical music circles it's practically an orthodoxy. Some musos got terribly upset with me a couple of weeks back for saying that music is entertainment before it's anything else. And they wonder why they're not more popular...
John Attridge@John_Attridge

"I'm really enjoying this novel" no. Enjoyment is a distraction. To appreciate fictional form, you must rigorously avoid all feelings of pleasure

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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@DeivonDrago @RLangford18 @zenahitz @orzelc @OurLadyofAntifa No, I’m simply saying that classical electrodynamics is very much used in, say, magnetohydrodynamics to study plasmas, magnetospheres etc., non-linear optics, in semiclassical models in quantum optics, etc. I’m not saying anything profound, just pointing out its relevance.
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@zenahitz @RLangford18 @orzelc @OurLadyofAntifa What do you think a primary source is in science? (Note: in science, not history of science. Also, note that primary source is not necessarily the same thing as first/original publication.) How do you define “science as a liberal art” as opposed to science in any other sense?
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@zenahitz Not any better or deeper than or “closer to the source” than reading a presentation based on 150 years of further understanding and development of treatment and notation. You are still thinking about it as, e.g., primary documents in history. It’s not comparable.
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Zena Hitz
Zena Hitz@zenahitz·
Yes, it absolutely does help you understand the theory.
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector

@zenahitz Reading Maxwell’s original publications does not help you “understand the foundations” in the sense of understanding the scientific theory of electromagnetism. It does help you understand its *history*. And that’s the difference here, I think.

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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@DeivonDrago @RLangford18 @zenahitz @orzelc @OurLadyofAntifa Exactly, because the vector-calculus formulation is by far the better way to formulate the theory, arguably giving us a better understanding of the physics (but we don’t necessarily read Heaviside’s exact words either because they also hold no privileged position). >
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@Quasilocal Same. But it’s funny looking at this guy’s follow-up trying to come up with ways to invalidate everyone who say “I’ve experienced both sets of conditions and I’ll take the -30°C.” Like, just have your preference, man … 🤷‍♂️
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@RLangford18 @zenahitz @orzelc @OurLadyofAntifa The idea of an original source where that any subsequent work gets further away from is very peculiar to some humanities disciplines, where you can, say, read the Magna Carta or read someone’s description of the Magna Carta. But in physics we don’t study Maxwell, we study EM.
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@RLangford18 @zenahitz @orzelc @OurLadyofAntifa Exactly, our understanding is built up piece by piece, idea building on idea, theory getting further and further refined. But the point here is that it makes no sense to sense to say that any particular presentation of a specific piece theory is any closer to the object of study.
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@Ljiljana1972 @barrygoldman1 That assumes there is such a thing as “the source”. That’s true in some fields and/or some topics, but not universal. There’s in general no such thing in STEM disciplines. Even elsewhere a hard distinction between textbooks and “real books” seems rather artificial.
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Pelagia
Pelagia@Ljiljana1972·
@barrygoldman1 I do not think that's true. Plenty of _real_ books still 😂. When I was in highschool I just didn't like textbooks in which an author chews up other people's thoughts for me to memorize. I never liked to study other people's notes but enjoyed reading from the source. 😊
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Pelagia
Pelagia@Ljiljana1972·
I really need to repeat my story again. I ended up studying philosophy because I discovered that the other dept I was interested in (psychology) relied mostly on textbooks not real books and I wanted to study real books 😁(these are the exact words I used as a high schooler).
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector

@OurLadyofAntifa @orzelc @zenahitz Is that really true? Granted, most of my experience is in STEM, but also my non-STEM experience is that studying at intro to intermediate level is greatly facilitated by material being synthesised in textbooks. Research level may be different.

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Magnus Borgh nag-retweet
Will Kinney
Will Kinney@WKCosmo·
There is a fundamental disconnect between STEM and humanities/philosophy in that STEM by its nature does not value the wisdom of the ancients in any special way. We understand a lot more about Einstein's theories than Einstein did, because we have had a century to find deeper, simpler, and clearer ways to think about the physics. Contemporary scientists by and large are not confused about the things that Einstein was confused about, we are confused about new things, that Einstein barely imagined.
Zena Hitz@zenahitz

Once again, are we assuming a contemporary scientist is *not* confused? Science is always incomplete, no? Or do we live in an age of exceptional enlightenment?

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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@zenahitz Reading Maxwell’s original publications does not help you “understand the foundations” in the sense of understanding the scientific theory of electromagnetism. It does help you understand its *history*. And that’s the difference here, I think.
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@zenahitz > It’s not that researchers then were confused and researchers now are not, it’s that we are confused about the currently open questions in our time. Cutting edge theory is fumbling as much now as it was then, but what we have had 150+ years to learn, we understand better.
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Zena Hitz
Zena Hitz@zenahitz·
Hard disagree. One question: Why would it be that the original sources are confused about what they are doing, but today's researchers are not? Is it magic? Of course, original scientific papers don't bring you up to date on the latest thing. They do help you to see foundations.
Chad Orzel@orzelc

@zenahitz Really not the best approach in STEM, where the original sources are often very confused about what they're doing, use obsolete notation, etc , where modern textbook treatments have a more complete understanding and fully developed formalism.

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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@OurLadyofAntifa @orzelc @zenahitz I don’t see those as one or the other, but as complementary. I got different things out of going to the music history lectures and reading the music history textbook, even though both were concerned with orienting us in the broad-strokes development of (Western) music.
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Stan of Cleves
Stan of Cleves@OurLadyofAntifa·
@SpinVector @orzelc @zenahitz because teachers possess that in-real-time, interpersonal adaptibility which books (dear though they ate to me) notoriously lack. But I quite recognize that my preferred solution is not always practicable.
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@OurLadyofAntifa @orzelc @zenahitz > There are plenty of textbooks that are just as good now as years or sometimes decades ago. And even those that do get more frequent updates, adapting to students having an older edition is not usually a big problem.
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Magnus Borgh
Magnus Borgh@SpinVector·
@OurLadyofAntifa @orzelc @zenahitz Fuss about editions etc is to some extent a failing of teaching and some publishers more than textbooks as a concept and tool, imo. There is very rarely a need to “stay current” by insisting on a new edition every couple of years and only the latest being good enough. >
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Tuklasin

@okularab @RichardBratby @DeivonDrago @RLangford18 @zenahitz @orzelc @OurLadyofAntifa @Quasilocal