Physicist Amok

What follows is abject navel gazing.

I originally studied physics. I did a lot of mathematics. I dabbled in computer science (and programmed a lot, which is something else). Now I’m immersed in biology. What do I call myself when someone asks?

These days, a mathematician.

This strikes me as odd: I don’t define my occupation by what I work on. But I think I finally understand why.

Here is the best definition I know of a physicist: someone who has been through Jackson’s E&M. If you survived it, you cemented a mindset shared by a community. In physics, everything is about time series. Anything not about time series is a statistical property of a time series.

In biology — not biophysics — trees are the natural unit. The logic of genetics deals in trees. Time series are awkward and dangerous. If we go to behavior and psychology, even the tree is inadequate.

After I settled into biology, I found myself with two deep mental frameworks, one next to the other. I spend a lot of thought trying to mesh them, and I have not yet managed it.

But wait! This is half of mathematics. Gian-Carlo Rota pointed out that axiomatic frameworks in mathematics are a sort of “hardware” for a “software” of mathematical facts. Lisp wizards who think of programs as abstract, nigh Platonic objects will interpret this the way I mean it; I hesitate to throw this analogy to anyone used to a FORTRAN descended language. A new mathematical fact is desirable; a new framework that brings known facts closer to trivial is just as novel. It itself is a mathematical fact. This way lies category theory.

The scientific equivalent of a stateless expatriate is a mathematician.