So Why Are There No Softwarephysicists?

I started working on softwarephysics in 1979 and I have struggled with this question for many years. In my last post, I proposed the idea of thinking of both software and money as being virtual substances. This brought to mind an old high school experience of mine from 1969. During the last semester of my senior year, while I and all of my fellow classmates were well established in our well deserved senior slump, I came across one of those teachers who remain with you for the rest of your life. In this very last semester of high school, we all had to take a mandatory course in economics, in which, from the onset, I totally had no interest, having already mentally departed for the University of Illinois to study physics. However, to my surprise, this teacher totally won me over on the very first day of class with an introduction to the course that went something like this:

We have had money in circulation for several thousand years. We have had domestic and international trade for several thousand years. We have had governments collecting taxes, tariffs, and tribute for several thousand years. We have had banks and money lending for several thousand years. Writing and mathematics have been with us for several thousand years too, and they were invented primarily so that we could do accounting, which has also been with us for several thousand years. And all of these things had life or death consequences for the people of the time. Wars were fought over these issues. Kingdoms and civilizations rose and fell over these issues. All of human history was shaped by these issues. So the question is, dear student, how come there were no economists until the 18th century? Everything that modern economists study and work with had been around for several thousand years, and yet there were no economists! Why? British economist Adam Smith is credited with inventing economics when he published The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Why did that take several thousand years? What changed? What changed was a way of thinking brought about by Galileo, Des Cartes, Spinoza, and Newton. As Thomas Paine put it, it was The Age of Reason. The Enlightenment of the 18th century brought on by the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century created a worldview capable of contemplating economic theories. In this worldview, the Universe was, at last, understandable and rational - it followed physical laws and so too could economic activities.

It has been 66 years since the Age of Software began in the spring of 1941 when Konrad Zuse completed his Z3 computer. But in all that time, I have never seen a theory for software behavior, outside of softwarephysics, that depicted software with invariant tangible physical properties and a set of underlying principles or laws that govern those properties. I have never seen an economic theory of software. Yet deep down I am convinced that nearly all IT professionals really do think of software as a virtual substance. At times we curse software, at other times we cajole software, but at all times we are obsessed with software. I started programming in the fall of 1972 when I took the obligatory course in FORTRAN programming that nearly all physics majors took at the time, and ever since it has been the same story no matter where I go or what I do. I have programmed on punched cards, punched tape, magnetic tape and disk drives using no editor, line editors, full-screen editors, and CASE editors. I have used 3rd generation languages, 4th generation languages, CASE languages, compiled languages and interpreted languages and it has always been predictably the same. When I start working on some code, it’s like nothing has really changed in 35 years. It’s all the same problems over and over, day in and day out. In physics, we would say that software is homogeneous, isotropic and time-invariant. That means that software is the same no matter where you go, where you look, or where you find yourself in time. It’s always the same thing over and over.

Such symmetries have profound implications in modern physics. Emmy Noether was a brilliant mathematical genius, who like Einstein before her, fled Nazi Germany in 1933. In 1918, she published Noether’s Theorem which has become a fundamental tenet in theoretical physics. Her theorem states that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the conservation laws and the symmetries of nature. For example, let’s suppose you do a simple high school physics experiment like colliding two billiard balls on a pool table. Now move the whole contraption 100 miles east and do the same exact experiment. You get the same results. That means the results are symmetric under a spatial translation. Noether showed that this translational symmetry implied the law of the conservation of momentum – the bad stuff that happens when you run into a parked car. Now rotate the pool table 180⁰ and repeat the experiment. Again you get the same result. Symmetry under rotation implies the conservation of angular momentum – why a skater speeds up when she pulls in her arms in a spin. Do the same experiment a month later, and again you will get the same results. The symmetry over time implies the conservation of energy. So the fact that software is homogeneous, isotropic, and time-invariant just screams out for some underlying laws at work. Something has to be going on!

Next time I really will pick up again with our steam engine designers and thermodynamics. I am a little hesitant to get deeper into physics, since there is the chance of losing some of you, given the very low level of popularity of physics with the general public. But I am going to forge ahead with as little math as possible and try to stick to the main ideas of physics from an IT perspective. My old physics department had a plaque on the wall that read “I understand the material; I just can’t do the problems”. I have frequently thought a more fitting plaque would have been “I can do the problems; I just don’t understand the material.” In my opinion, one of the major failings of teaching physics in this country has been an overemphasis on problem-solving. After all, most physics students never end up being professional physicists, but the underlying concepts of physics can be understood by most people and can be used by all on a daily basis to improve their lives.

So where are all the softwarephysicists? Why you’re one of them! You just don’t know it yet.


Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Steve Johnston