The Physicist’s Repertoire
Every master needs a repertoire. Jazz players, tennis players, chess players and more, all have a repertoire. A repertoire has two parts: content and skills. When I graduated with my Ph.D. in physics I thought I had a sufficient repertoire to be able to return to the question that had piqued my interest a decade ago and be able to make fresh progress toward discovery. But in just about fifteen months I had exhausted the repertoire it took me eight years of education to build.
I now realize that what happened is, not that my training had failed me, but that my training was as a neutrino phenomenologist, not as a discovery physicist. These two repertoires (not identities) are not mutually exclusive, but I was clearly missing one as part of my portfolio. So, in some sense, as a fellow physicist once told me, I am mis-trained (although they didn’t mean it in such an encouraging sense).
So, like repertoires for many fields which can be mastered, I am treating scientific discovery no differently. And here, by “discovery”, I most definitely mean being the first to conceive of and correctly articulate a previously inconceivable truth about Nature, and not merely the products of any kind of scientific inquiry; of which much of neutrino phenomenology is a good example–we often verify or measure things that have already been discovered, according to my usage of the word.
The content part of the discovery repertoire includes both knowledge of the discovery process itself, using evidence-based research, as well as historical sources and direct conversation with those who have discovered something new. For physics specifically, it must also include a new schema for physics-specific knowledge that is better suited for use with discovery strategies. If we think of things in the old ways, we are likely to be trapped in the old methods.
The other half of the discovery repertoire is skills, the actual physical doing, or discovering. In music, these might be fingerings, scales, vibrato, or other techniques to execute any of the musical pieces in one’s portfolio. In physics, we think of “skills” as almost exclusively synonymous with “mathematics” or “computation”. Other “soft” skills, like writing, presenting, and teaching, we acknowledge in the context of career advancement and reputation, but not necessarily physics acuity. But research suggests that soft skills like logic, creativity, reasoning (especially analogical thinking), and more play crucial and necessary roles in scientific discovery. For physics discovery, mathematics is necessary, but not sufficient.
These then are two aspects of “the physicist’s repertoire” that need to be expanded as supporting players in pursuing discovery-level physics. These carefully rethought knowledge schemas and discovery techniques need to be identified, refined, and articulated so that they become operational, not informational; so that I don’t just know, I do. Since writing, as a way of refining ideas, is such a strong part of my training from my English degree, I’m keen to make The Physicist’s Repertoire come to life as a series of slim volumes sharing what I learn.
They will be in the spirit of the McGraw Hill published series of Schaum’s Outlines, which I have adored and cherished for years as one who likes self-study (otherwise I would never have accrued as many as 37 different volumes on math and physics at one time). Brief, to the point, and emphasizing strategies and mental techniques, paired with physics-specific fully worked out examples, is indeed the tactic I wish to take in devising a discovery portfolio. Creating The Physicist’s Repertoire will be a way to re-train myself as a physics researcher who uses discovery tactics as my modus operandi. So that I can become more adept at the art of discovery.