Physics: A Universal Discipline? Since physicists often complain about the lack of jobs, funding, etc. in academic physics, I am going to proclaim the following truths:
According to Georgetown's physics department website (http://www.physics.georgetown.edu/premed.htm ), "...physics majors are more likely to be accepted into medical school than majors from all biological sciences or chemistry." Now that's incredible. Who would have thought that biology or chemistry wouldn't be as helpful as physics in preparing students for medical school? (That question is mine alone.) Isn't physics just some ivory-tower subject that lazy people take if they don't like the complexity that the other sciences stress? (I've actually heard that question more times than I want to remember.) Don't the "emergent properties" of biology cause a macroscopic system to be more than the sum of its parts? (I've heard that many times also.)
My answer to those last two questions would be, "Physics is the easiest and hardest science." Granted, the chemical properties of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate are harder to study than, say, the motion of a ball on a frictionless straight line with no external forces. Much harder. But...
Understanding Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism is harder than understanding NADP, or the evolution of beak shapes of Galapagos finches, or the movements of mRNA. Studying SU(3) Lie groups in the strong interaction is... well... HARD! Even a usually-not-too-difficult-to-solve equation like -hbar^2[(del^2)psi]/(2m)+V(psi)=i*hbar*d(psi)/dt (the time-dependent Schrodinger equation, of course) can be really difficult to solve in certain physical situations. Just understanding how a particle behaves in an infinite square well is... complicated. Systems in physics that look simple contain a lot of complexity. Those who have taken more than intro courses in physics have realized that complexity increases as you go down to more fundamental levels. That's quite shocking, but it's the way the universe works.
With the lack of funding and jobs in physics, a lot more physicists are entering other professions, like law, economics, engineering, management, and... just about everything else. Economics and physics coalesced to form econophysics, which is designed to give more accurate models in economic theory. (Economics would be useless without accurate mathematical descriptions of what is actually happening; you can't draw just any aggregate demand curve, for example. Who would have thought that partial differential equations could be just as useful in economics as physics? Econophysicists would.)
I hope everyone will realize that physics really is a universal subject. "Complexity" can't get in its way. When the unified theory is discovered (which will only happen if scientists see the value of the anthropic principle), physics really will explain everything.
Of course, that will only happen if there really is a unified theory.  ¶ 10:20 PM