The Scientific Hierarchy Of Smugness

Xkcd Science hierarchy Mathematics Reductionism Interdisciplinary Purity Complexity Scientific rivalry

Academia Physics Math Science Chemistry

1 day ago 3,360 views 0 shares

The Scientific Hierarchy Of Smugness

xkcd-memes, science-hierarchy-memes, academic-humor-memes, physics-memes, mathematics-memes | ScienceHumor.io

Behold the eternal academic food chain! The top panel shows sciences arranged by "purity" with physicists smugly declaring dominance while mathematicians exist in their own dimension entirely. Meanwhile, the bottom panel reveals the dirty secret - as complexity increases, everyone's just desperately simplifying reality to make their equations work!

This is basically every interdepartmental faculty meeting distilled into its purest form. Physicists think they're the apex predators of science until they need to calculate something with actual real-world messiness. Then suddenly it's "assume a spherical cow" time!

And poor mathematicians, off in their abstract universe where numbers don't even need units. They're playing 5D chess while everyone else is arguing about whose science has more prestige. Truly the introverts of the academic world!

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