Another physics department bites the dust...

...this time at Reading Unversity. This follows a long list of universities giving up on science. Newcastle closed our physics course a while ago (replaced by a 'Natural Science' B.A. which is a curious reinvention to say the least). The reason? Teaching/doing science costs money and the field is crucially underfunded. Government has been trying to address this problem by rejigging the RAE to be more metrics (and science) friendly, although all attempts have failed fairly miserably thus far. Let us all hope it is not too little too late.

With Newcastle, our switch from physics to natural science may cause a problem for philosophers. In order to help preserve physics, Newcastle started a 'Philosophical Studies' programme (originally as a combined honours degree, now independent, from what I gather). Now that physics has been axed and its members mixed with chemists in this new natural science programme, the need for any degree programme to help physics retain numbers disappears. Add to this the planned retirement of its only professor (himself a professor of theoretical physics and not philosophy so I would not expect too many outside philosophy to know our highest ranking staff member in philosophical studies...itself a cause for concern) without plans to replace him with a professor of philosophy and philosophy may well die two deaths in Newcastle. We once boasted Mary Midgley, Willie Charlton, and Jane Heal. What glory years we had. Now most of the philosophical action occurs in politics (Peter Jones, Derek Bell, Ian O'Flynn, Graham Long, Christiane Hiley, me), including conferences with Nussbaum and Pogge, and law (Ian Ward, Richard Mullender, Richard Collier).