Dr Joseph Martin joseph.d.martin@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Prestige Asymmetry in American Physics: Aspirations, Applications, and the Purloined Letter Effect
Martin, Joseph D.
Authors
Abstract
Why do similar scientific enterprises garner unequal public approbation? High energy physics attracted considerable attention in the late-twentieth-century United States, whereas condensed matter physics – which occupied the greater proportion of US physicists – remained little known to the public, despite its relevance to ubiquitous consumer technologies. This paper supplements existing accounts of this much remarked-upon prestige asymmetry by showing that popular emphasis on the mundane technological offshoots of condensed matter physics and its focus on human-scale phenomena have rendered it more recondite than its better-known sibling field. News reports about high energy physics emphasize intellectual achievement; reporting on condensed matter physics focuses on technology. And whereas frontier-oriented rhetoric of high energy physics communicates ideals of human potential, discoveries that smack of the mundane highlight human limitations and fail to resonate with the widespread aspirational vision of science – a consequence I call “the purloined letter effect.”
Citation
Martin, J. D. (2017). Prestige Asymmetry in American Physics: Aspirations, Applications, and the Purloined Letter Effect. Science in Context, 30(4), 475-506. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0269889717000242
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | May 17, 2017 |
Online Publication Date | Feb 8, 2018 |
Publication Date | Dec 1, 2017 |
Deposit Date | Sep 18, 2019 |
Publicly Available Date | Oct 4, 2019 |
Journal | Science in Context |
Print ISSN | 0269-8897 |
Electronic ISSN | 1474-0664 |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 30 |
Issue | 4 |
Pages | 475-506 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1017/s0269889717000242 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1291374 |
Related Public URLs | https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/274133 |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(299 Kb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Copyright Statement
This article has been published in a revised form in Science in Context http://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889717000242. This version is published under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND. No commercial re-distribution or re-use allowed. Derivative works cannot be distributed. © copyright holder.
You might also like
How Technology Made Condensed Matter Physics Boring
(2024)
Journal Article
The Age of Industrial Laboratories
(2024)
Book Chapter
Word and Image in Popular Science
(2024)
Book Chapter
Why Study the History of the Natural Sciences?
(2024)
Journal Article
Revenge of the Nerds
(2023)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search