Make Physics Great Again: America has Failed

ContentWestern civilization, still led by the United States, is not in good shape. What threatens the planet is a short-term superficial thinking tradition that can also be identified in the field that enabled civilization to flourish over the centuries: fundamental physics, which has its origin in Europe. The atomic bomb and the Moon landing saw American scientists lead the world technologically, yet they forgot one thing: to thoroughly think about elementary laws of nature in the tradition of Albert Einstein and other geniuses of the early 20th century. One hundred years later, this absence of deeper reflection in the American culture of thinking has become obvious well beyond science. With the declining West facing a looming crisis, the paradigm of fundamental science must therefore also be redefined if civilization is to survive sustainably in the 21st century.From the Book:While the European natural-philosophical tradition of research focused on the fundamental laws of nature and pursued the question of "what holds the world together in its inmost folds," the technologically inclined culture of the New World was dominated by a desire to realize great visionary projects such as the atomic bomb and the moon landing, even if such projects had hitherto seemed unthinkable. While these projects may represent mankind's greatest technological achievements, they are not our greatest intellectual accomplishments. Whereas the technological-inventive element went hand in hand with fundamental research in the European tradition, the element of natural-philosophical reflection has been missing from U.S. scientific practice for nearly 100 years. This has obvious cultural roots. To put it bluntly, Americans don't like to think thoroughly.Comments on the book:A book I immediately became enthralled with. In a historical-critical analysis, Alexander Unzicker presents the differences between European and American physics culture in a captivating way. This is how science should be taught.Ernst Peter Fischer, historian of science