I also remember one distinguished, semi-retired member of staff, not in Physics but a closely associated department, lamenting the demise of true "Natural Philosophy", at the expense of what he called "unclear physics" (which probably included elementary particle physics at that time). In retrospect I'm really not sure why he said this; perhaps he felt that particle physicists, hypnotised by the dizzying array of "fundamental" particles they'd uncovered, had stopped thinking about what they were doing and got suckered into a sort of sub-atomic butterfly collecting. Anyway I guess he felt it was important to think about what you were doing and why you were doing it, as well as how to do it. Put like that, why would anybody argue?
I thought about all this again when I read this article in the Guardian. At first sight it's about a "war on the humanities" but really it's about the huge changes sweeping British universities.
The whole climate of higher education is changing. Like climate change in the natural world, some sections of the landscape are more vulnerable to these changes than others (look at the case of high-altitude glaciers, for example). Most of that article is about the changes in ideology in the universities, in thinking about which subjects should be taught and why, in who makes these decisions and how, in universities' relationship with the state and politicians. These changes have happened in a way that means their effects are more immediate and severe in the humanities but they are changes to the whole of the university system, not just the humanities.
I made the mistake of looking at the comments. An article about the changes sweeping higher education spawned a pathetic squabble between scientists and humanities types: "scientists are children," "humanities are a waste of time," etc. Oh dear. Scientists really don't profit, for more than a week or two at most, if free enquiry ("academic freedom") is stifled. And a surrender to short-term, utilitarian aims will come back to bite them. Worst of all, all those broad-thinking, articulate people from the humanities, who might have been able to come to their defence, will have been chased out of the universities completely - well, apart from the one or two institutions that can continue to purvey a sort of classical education to a tiny, privileged elite.
So ultimately I have no doubt that Natural Philosophers really need to have the other kind around.Just as people who live near sea level should be worried about those disappearing glaciers.
