Steve Benka writes that he attended a conference organized by a software developer and that he met two physicists there. One of them did physical research in the field of polymer diapers; the other directed the development of instruments for measuring the dielectric properties of road asphalt. Both saw themselves as engineers, Benka adds, and says he thinks that is a curious self-interpretation.
I think those two physicists are right in calling themselves engineers. I think the entanglement of science and technology compels us to reformulate the problem of physics's invisibility.
Benka has to be admired for his forceful analysis of the basic properties and toolkit of a physicist. But he has disregarded one point: the kinds of things investigated by 21st-century physicists. Normal nonacademic physics does not “pursue answers to eternal questions,” Benka says. It has become entangled in the modern-day web of technology, industry, and government programs. Consequently, normal physicists apply their toolkit to the investigation of diaper polymers, road asphalt, hearing aids, semiconductors, optical fibers, and so on. These materials and devices cannot be found in nature. They are the products of human industry.
Both polymer diapers and diaper polymers have been synthesized or manufactured. When the North American continent was first explored, the Allegheny Mountains were there, but neither asphalt roads nor road asphalt could be found. Some materials may be naturally semiconducting, but the normal semiconductors of institutional physics are technological products consisting of synthetic materials.
What of the visibility of normal physics, the scientific discipline that researches into the objects and materials of the everyday world? Its visibility is severely restricted because of its entanglement in the structures of technology, industry, and politics. The restrictions stem from the obligation to remain silent in the interests of political expediency and industrial competition. Secrecy and invisibility are highly valued in those spheres.
The question of physics's visibility becomes the question of its independence. Physics resembles journalism on that point. And Steve Benka knows a great deal about journalism. Science and journalism bear a close family resemblance. Both physicists and journalists are curious about the world. They need to understand its workings, and they try to do so without recourse to authorities. They both also subscribe to the ideal of objectivity. But in both cases it is also true that their independence may be restricted by the power of owners, investors, advertisers, and the like, which can result in intentional invisibility.
