Commentary: When pop and science people run in Twitter circles
Paul Halpern is a University of the Sciences physics professor and the author of "Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat: How Two Great Minds Battled Quantum Randomness to Create a Unified Theory of Physics"
Paul Halpern
is a University of the Sciences physics professor and the author of "Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat: How Two Great Minds Battled Quantum Randomness to Create a Unified Theory of Physics"
At its best, Twitter can offer the kind of creative connections and sharing of ideas that would have been nearly impossible decades ago. It can link individuals with parallel or complementary interests, and offer them the chance to enrich each other's enterprises.
As a physicist and science writer, I have been gratified by the interplay I've had with so many other scientists and writers. I have learned about books, poems, and other works that I wouldn't have known about otherwise. Not only professional, but also amateur, historians of science have enlightened me about things I'd never heard of, and firmly but politely corrected my misunderstandings.
The most surprising twist of fate that has happened to me on Twitter has been an unlikely pairing with a pop-music star interested in science. If 30 years ago, when I was a struggling graduate student in theoretical physics and Roland Orzabal, of Tears for Fears, was riding high on the charts with number-one singles, I was told that someday people would message us both on a regular basis, I would have been astounded.
In 1986, I was finishing up the work for my highly mathematical dissertation, which had required such intense concentration that it had left me drained. Focused so much on my efforts, I felt like an a computational zombie. There must be more to life, I thought. That's when I decided to nurture my imaginative side.
Once I received my degree I decided to take a break - anything but mathematical calculations - and turned to writing science books for the general public. Although I soon resumed a measure of research and published a number of scholarly articles, popular-science writing became my passion.
In 2013, while researching a book I was writing about Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, and their contributions to quantum physics, I noted that Orzabal had written several songs about those topics. In "God's Mistake," for instance, which was a minor hit in the 1990s, he turned Einstein's critique of quantum randomness - "God does not play dice" - into a musical reflection on the fickleness and chance qualities of love.
I was intensely curious how and why a rock musician would become interested in theoretical physics. I wrote him a letter and he graciously responded with thoughtful, splendid recollections about his work.
It turned out that Orzabal was also doing some soul-searching in the late '80s and '90s. He didn't want to be boxed into the expectations of being an " '80s pop idol." Music was for him a form of creative expression that needed to be nourished. He didn't want to be a musical automaton that kept doing the same thing.
He had broadened his perspective not only by soaking in various musical styles, such as jazz, but also by reading a wide array of mind, spirit, and popular-science books. The philosophical questions raised in such works had to some extent influenced his songwriting.
Shortly afterward, Orzabal joined Twitter, in part to promote his first published novel, about an '80s songwriter seeking new directions - in that case, opera. Having been a tweeter for a few years, I welcomed him, and we exchanged some tweets. His style on Twitter, posting a medley of stream-of-conscious observations that often had a poetic quality, was amusing and compelling. He soon acquired a base of followers.
In early 2015, when my Einstein book was about to be published, I sent him an advance copy. As he was reading it, he posted some cryptic tweets about it. Briefly, he even set his Twitter location to be "somewhere between the scaffolding and the tarp," which referred to a metaphor in my book for the mechanisms of general relativity. I was thrilled, and even more elated when he endorsed the book.
Since then, a number of his fans interested in science have taken to tweeting both of us with questions, photos, links, and comments. The topics have ranged from wormholes and space travel to Pluto and exoplanets. I have become used to being an unofficial science adviser to a rock group's extraordinarily curious fan base.
The best thing about all this is not just getting to know a celebrated musician who wrote so many acclaimed, award-winning songs, but also finding a mutual venue for sharing creative ideas and insights about the world.
Where else can a scientist who is a fan of pop music and a musician who is a fan of pop science get to hang out with a bevy of imaginative souls at all hours? With all of its drawbacks, I relish the side of social media that brings creative minds together.