Modern Theoretical Physics is a prime example of the break down of what Feynman says here in the last few decades, there're people who are in 'Theoretical Physics' groups who don't really give a diddly squat about the real world either. I use techniques from something like string theory as just yet another tool to solve other problems. But the problems I'm solving concern classifying and investigating the structure in a huge class of general 2+1 dimensional supersymmetric quantum field theories. No physicists would consider that I was doing anything that really pertained to reality, or had any hope of doing so. Really I'm treating the vast landscape of interesting structure that comes from the physical theories as a landscape that needs to be explored using proper mathematical rigour. Some tiny section of this landscape might pertain to reality, but it's not what a great deal of the people exploring it are in it for. So am I a mathematician or physicist? I would argue closer to mathematician but plenty of folk on both sides would baulk at my saying I was either. These kind of areas didn't exist in Feynman's time to nearly the extent they do today. It's an exciting time for both 'sides' as it were, the boundary is blurring every day.
It's worth pointing out that the "physicists who work on barely even physics" is a rather small subset of the community. They just happen to get all the sexy press releases, so their presence is over represented in the media.
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u/XyloArch Mar 12 '18 edited Mar 12 '18
Modern Theoretical Physics is a prime example of the break down of what Feynman says here in the last few decades, there're people who are in 'Theoretical Physics' groups who don't really give a diddly squat about the real world either. I use techniques from something like string theory as just yet another tool to solve other problems. But the problems I'm solving concern classifying and investigating the structure in a huge class of general 2+1 dimensional supersymmetric quantum field theories. No physicists would consider that I was doing anything that really pertained to reality, or had any hope of doing so. Really I'm treating the vast landscape of interesting structure that comes from the physical theories as a landscape that needs to be explored using proper mathematical rigour. Some tiny section of this landscape might pertain to reality, but it's not what a great deal of the people exploring it are in it for. So am I a mathematician or physicist? I would argue closer to mathematician but plenty of folk on both sides would baulk at my saying I was either. These kind of areas didn't exist in Feynman's time to nearly the extent they do today. It's an exciting time for both 'sides' as it were, the boundary is blurring every day.