James Tobin wrote:

>The "modern" in art and in literature had its beginning within a few
>years of that and the very practical question that the Museum of Modern
>Art in New York had as to whether they should simply consider their
>collection closed and representing an historical period--or whether MOMA
>should continue to collect and display more recent work without violating
>its original mission shows the difficulty and seriousness of the question.
>I would say that modernism in music began when I said and ended as an
>historical period at the onset of minimalism and the kind of postmodernism
>or neoromanticism that George Rochberg began with his Concord Quartets.
>(There had been neoromanticism before that, e.g.  in Hanson, Barber and
>Thomson, to further muddy things.) Thus if the student meant to ask what
>should we call the music of the period 1900-2000 then the only adequate
>answer would be 20th Century.

A course in Modern Physics is a standard sophomore offering for physics
and engineering students.  The concerns on title and content are remarkably
similar to those in the arts.  Seemimg discontinuous changes in any of
these disciplines all seem less discontinuous when viewed in more detail.
Revolutionary changes seem almost always to be forshadowed - but they must
be acknowledged as revolutionary in the final analysis.  And all of these
disciplines underwent such changes between - say- 1895 and 1910.
Coincidence? Almost certainly not, although the relation between physics
and the arts is difficult to pin down authoritatively, despite many
attempts.

A course in Modern Physics mainly concerns itself with relativity and
quantum physics and the implications of these two new ways of looking at
the world - and calculating the world's properties.  Most of that was in
place by 1930, although modern applications (lasers, superconductivity,
semiconductors) are treated as well.

A lot of important twentieth century physics is not treated in this course
- chaos, nonlinearity in general, biological physics, complexity, polymers.
So the MOdern Physics name is related to a set of important subjects by
convention.  For the rest there is a strong case for inventing a new
course- Postmodern Physics.  Bernard Chasan (realizing that many will use
their delete buttons but a few might just find this rather intriguing)

Professor Bernard Chasan
Physics Department, Boston University