Interdisciplinary Research and the American University

Abstract

The rise and fall of physical theories may have common features with the appearances and the disappearances of fashion, their political and economic roots. The history and philosophy of scientific methodology form the background to the consideration of big physics, accelerator research, and of small physics carried out with electronic equipment. The first is fashionable, the second not yet. It is concluded that science is a perpetual race, enjoyable for scientists to run.