Although I am impressed with J. Murray Gibson’s courage to abjure humility and lecture us on the evils of misplaced arrogance, I hold that there is a little more, and very much less, to be said on that topic. Even as we physicists must be arrogant to box with God as we do in our exploration of His creation, we have to be humble in considering possible errors in our conclusions. Our answers must be correct; our colleagues are—properly—unforgiving of error.
Contrary to Gibson, I don’t find that the “me teacher, you student” arrangement that goes back at least 5000 years to Ur of the Chaldees is insufferably arrogant. Nor is it arrogant to hold that a particular formal mentoring program that Gibson espouses, one that extends beyond our present traditions, might do more harm than good.
Then Gibson confuses political correctness with humility and considers that our arrogance contributes to our “severe underrepresentation of women and minorities” and adds “Since I do not believe that white males have an intrinsically higher ability in physics than other groups have, I think we might have a problem in our profession.” Years ago, at a small conference held to address the barriers women meet in science, a prominent astrophysicist suggested that we should regard those barriers as dismantled only when 50% of scientists were women. Ruth Bader Ginsburg then asked if, at that time, we should expect that only 3% of scientists be Jewish!
The varying representations of different races, genders, and ethnic groups in science, arts, sports, commerce, and other fields surely follow from causes outside of physics or any perceived arrogance of physicists.
Overall, one must not equate arrogance with disagreement with Gibson—or even with me.
