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Chris Quigg (Fermilab)The Nature of
Science
Watch the talk (running time approx. 50 min.)
Science is one source and symbol for an imaginative, disciplined mind.
In addition to giving us basic information we need to make sense of the
natural world, the sciences teach us to identify and scrutinize our
assumptions, to hone our powers of analysis, and to expand our capacity
for synthesis. They impart great lessons for any vocation: to link cause
with effect, to search for relevant evidence, and to seek the truth
without self-deception.
As a method for exploring—for finding things out—science lives by its
disdain for Authority and its reliance on experimentation and
observation. The seventeenth-century gentlemen who founded the Royal
Society of London took as their motto Nullius in verba—Don't take
anyone's word for it! Scientists are human. They have limited powers,
they make mistakes, they have incomplete knowledge, they may be too bold
or too cautious in interpreting their findings. Science is a system by
which imperfect beings can test and refine their understanding of the
world.
Like the practice of science, the study of science must be more than
acquiring a collection of facts. An awareness of how scientists think
and how science is done helps us realize its limitations. Scientists are
accustomed to dealing with doubt and uncertainty. Good scientific advice
may be frustratingly conditional: sometimes scientists don't know enough
to give a straight answer; sometimes Nature just can't be pinned down.
And there are some issues—like moral choices—that science by itself can
only inform, not resolve.
Scientific exploration is open-ended: today's facts are merely precise
statements of what scientists understand at this particular time, not
eternal truths. Science is organic, tentative; like life itself, science
is a becoming, a great adventure of the human mind and spirit.
Chris Quigg graduated in physics from Yale in 1966 and received
his
Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1970. After four years in the
Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook, he moved to
Fermilab,
which has been his scientific home ever since. He was for ten years
Head of Fermilab's Theoretical Physics Department, and held a joint
appointment at the University of Chicago from 1974 to 1991. In 1987 he
returned to Berkeley to serve for two years as Deputy Director of the
Superconducting Super Collider Central Design Group. He has held
visiting appointments at
École Normale
Supérieure in Paris, Cornell University, and Princeton
University; and as
Erwin Schrödinger Professor at the University of Vienna.
Quigg's research on
electroweak symmetry breaking and supercollider physics set the agenda
for the Large Hadron Collider under construction at the European Lab for
Particle Physics in Geneva. A new edition of his textbook, Gauge
Theories of the Strong, Weak, and
Electromagnetic Interactions, is in the works.
Chris Quigg is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science and of the American Physical Society, and was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan
Research Fellowship. He was Editor of the Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle
Science from 1994 to 2004. As Chair of the APS Division of Particles and Fields,
he led the organization of Snowmass 2001: a Summer Study on the Future of
Particle Physics.
Quigg was a charter member of Saturday Morning
Physics, Fermilab's enrichment program for high school students. He is a
Trustee of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. He
was featured recently in The Ultimate Particle, a road movie of
particle physics broadcast on ARTE in France and Germany. Outside the
laboratory, he enjoys cooking, music, and hiking the long-distance paths
in France.
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