Higher learning

In the episode of The Big Bang Theory entitled 'The Anxiety Optimization' (Season 8 Episode 13) 'ground-breaking discoveries' were contrasted with 'solid research'. The latter is what is performed by the majority of workers in academia. These workers are portrayed as simply going through the motions and doing a job during that period of their adult lives when they worked and followed careers just like anybody else. Making 'ground-breaking discoveries' is depicted as the superior of the two activities. This takes a different mentality - a certain genius - that is less about being 'adult' and doing the 'career thing' and more about keeping a youthful sense of discovery. It has been said of Albert Einstein (1879-1955) that he maintained a childish sense of questioning throughout his life.

In another episode (Series 4 Episode 15 – The Benefactor Factor), Sheldon Cooper doesn't want to go to a university fund raising evening and tells his flat mate Leonard to tell the university principal that... "Dr. Cooper feels that the best use of his time is to employ his rare and precious mental faculties to tear the mask off nature and stare at the face of God."

Quite! Let those interested in and able to understand institutional finance tend to that sort of business.

Where to find your meaning

Beverley: Well, there are studies that suggest that many who go into the performing arts suffer from an external locus of identity.

Penny: Yeah, I don’t know what that means.

Beverley: Well, it means you value yourself only as others value you, which is often the result of unmet childhood emotional needs.

From: The Big Bang Theory - Series 2 Episode 15 (The Maternal Capacitance)

 

On the whiteboard in our office, my colleague and I used to have a version this piece of dialogue on our whiteboard. We put it up to see if (a) any of the students who came to visit would read it and ask what it meant and (b) to see if one of those students (a part-time pole-dancer who was very much concerned about her appearance) would notice that we wrote it up thinking of her. (Nobody seemed to read it - certainly nobody asked about it; the part-time pole-dancer was one of them.)

The Big Bang Theory - 4

The fourth of my Big Bang Theory quotes. It speaks for itself. (Thus says a biologist!)

Penny: So, what's new in the world of physics?

Leonard: Nothing.

Penny: Really? Nothing?

Leonard: Well, with the exception of string theory not much has happened since the 1930s – and you can't prove string theory. At best you can say, '“Hey, look! My idea has an internal logical consistency'.

From: The Fuzzy Boots Corollary
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The Big Bang Theory - 3

The third of my Big Bang Theory quotes, demonstrating the rivalry between different branches of science.

Sheldon: I brought Amy here to show her some of the work I’m doing.

Amy: It’s very impressive, for theoretical work.

Sheldon: Do I detect a hint of condescension?

Amy: I’m sorry, was I being too subtle? I meant compared to the real-world applications of neurobiology, theoretical physics is, what’s the word I’m looking for? Hmm, cute.

Leonard and Howard together: Oooh!

Sheldon: Are you suggesting the work of a neurobiologist like Babinski could ever rise to the significance of a physicist like Clarke-Maxwell or Dirac?

Amy: I’m stating it outright. Babinski eats Dirac for breakfast and defecates Clarke-Maxwell.

Sheldon: You take that back.

Amy: Absolutely not. My colleagues and I are mapping the neurological substrates that subserve global information processing, which is required for all cognitive reasoning, including scientific inquiry, making my research ipso facto prior in the ordo cognoscendi. That means it’s better than his research, and by extension, of course, yours.

Leonard: I’m sorry, I’m-I’m still trying to work on the defecating Clark Maxwell, so…

Sheldon: Excuse me, but a grand unified theory, insofar as it explains everything, will ipso facto explain neurobiology.

Amy: Yes, but if I’m successful, I will be able to map and reproduce your thought processes in deriving a grand unified theory, and therefore, subsume your conclusions under my paradigm.

Sheldon: That’s the rankest psychologism, and was conclusively revealed as hogwash by Gottlob Frege in the 1890s!

Amy: We appear to have reached an impasse.

Sheldon: I agree. I move our relationship terminate immediately.

Amy: Seconded.

From: The Zazzy Substitution
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The Big Bang Theory - 2

This is the second of my collected Big Bang Theory quotes. It demonstrating seeing and thinking about things in somewhat different ways.

Leonard: All right, well, let me see if I can explain your situation using physics. What would you be if you were attached to another object by an inclined plane wrapped helically around an axis?

Sheldon: Screwed. 

(Later)

Sheldon: ... and I don’t want to be joined to another object by an inclined plane wrapped helically around an axis.

Amy: In what way are you screwed?

From: The Desperation Emanation
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The Big Bang Theory - 1

Every so often there one of the characters on The Big Bang Theory says something that is concise and insightful; something that no academic could possibly say about their own field quite so well: it has to be left to a comdey character instead. I have started collecting such quotes. In no particular order, here is the first:

Stephanie: ... So, how was your day?

Leonard: Oh, you know, I’m a physicist, so, I thought about stuff.

Stephanie: That’s it?

Leonard: Well, I wrote some of it down.



From: The Lizard–Spock Expansion
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