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“PHYSICS ENVY” – PHYSICS ABYSMALLY MISCONSTRUED!
(A synopsis of a of the same name)

When I switched from physics to marketing in 1988, I plunged into the literature confident that I would acquire useful knowledge. My naïveté came from the fact that in physics nearly any piece of knowledge can immediately be put to use. But I found just a chaotic heap of useless, contradictory schemes, visualizations, matrices, etc. And so, I had to progress by trial and error. I pride myself in having nearly quadrupled the bottom line of the Russian operations of a Western blue chip in 3.5 years.

Years later I discovered that the chaos in academic texts and minds is caused by the so-called “physics envy,” a term coined by Alan Tapp [1]. Tapp talks about physics’ “undue and malign influence within universities.” But the culprit is not physics per se but rather academia’s abysmal misunderstanding of the ways of physics. As a result, we have just thoughtless mimicry of the external trappings of physics and “Scientification of Non-Knowledge” (SONK).

Tapp rightly maintains that “physics envy could have a positive outcome.” But for that to occur, academia must take the trouble to embrace the true values and approaches of physics.

PHYSICS VS. ACADEMIC MARKETING

THEORY AND PRACTICE – Physics is closely linked with practice. Edward Teller: “The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.” Many R&D people are voracious readers of physics journals. They search for ideas to be incorporated into new products.

In academic marketing (ACADEME) – Practitioners ignore the results of academic “research.”

HONESTY – L. Feuerbach: “Honesty is the principal virtue of a scientist.” A dishonest scientist will sooner or later find himself among pseudo-scientists. R. Feynman: “If you make a theory,… you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it.” [2]. A true scientist always doubts.
–ACADEME – SONK-ists are inherently dishonest. They have no habit to cite cases that disagree with their constructs. Sometimes they even condescend to outright lies. Scientific dishonesty gives rise to academic hypocrisy.

PROOFS, CHECKS, AND TESTS – Science owes its birth to proving. Everything unproven is just a hypothesis awaiting its proof; or pseudo-science. Physics is only interested in faithful results. Some studies are re-tested many times over.
–ACADEME – One has to prove only one thing: a possibility to get extra profit due to a given idea. Alas, nearly nobody, nearly never proves this!

Philip Kotler justifies his contempt for proving things in a stunning manner: “I remember a remark of Paul Samuelson, my mentor: ‘It is difficult enough to develop theory than to take the time to prove it. That work can be done by others’. (!?)” [3]. But “others” are just happy with that unprovedness – nobody is going to question their papers and dissertations.

LOGIC – Real scientific reasoning is impossible without the strictest of logic.
–ACADEME – If exact scientists were exposed to academic texts, they would discover that nearly every one contains some logical flaws. Whole marketing books may rest on wrong precepts. Bruce Marcus on Kotler’s logic [4]: “[The book] sees the subject in such distorted ways as to remind me of Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide. His concept of life included such dicta as, ‘Are noses not so wonderfully made to fit spectacles’?”

MATHEMATICS – Physics is no exercise in applied mathematics. Math is just a possible tool, a suspicious tool. The danger of “garbage-in, garbage-out” makes physicists wary about math. Daniel Bernoulli: “It would be often better for the true physics if there were no mathematics in the world.” Einstein disliked mathematics. Number-crunchers should take heed of his words: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
–ACADEME – Misuse and abuse of mathematics are largely responsible for the current state of the
–ACADEME. It’s mesmerized by fancy math. Even economists are worried about that. Robert Heilbroner: “Mathematics has given economics rigor, but alas, also mortis.” Academics have transferred that rigor mortis to the vibrant craft of marketing.

INFORMATION AND PSEUDO-INFORMATION – Physicists normally go for information that might suggest some meaningful inferences and decisions. Most of other information is pseudo-information.
–ACADEME – There are reams of pseudo-informative data. Much of it is produced by irrelevant and absurd research.

DOMAINS OF VALIDITY – Everything is physics has its domain of validity. It is critically important to know those domains.
–ACADEME – When setting forth concepts and models, academics do not delineate their validity domains. Their texts are rife with facile statements that claim universality, although in fact they only refer to a specific situation. It results in dogmatization of academic concepts, thus rendering them useless for real-world marketing.

RESEARCH – The philosophy, ethics, and techniques of physics research have been refined for centuries. Its results are of immense importance for society.
–ACADEME – Most of “research” is an exercise in futility, with business and society getting noting of it. Research firms, of course, recommend all sorts of surveys, the longer and more expensive the better [5].

TERMS AND DEFINITIONS – Descartes: “Refine the meaning of words, and you would save humanity from most of its delusions.” Physical “words” are refined so meticulously that any physicist will give you identical definitions of terms.
–ACADEME – Academics churn out dozens of terms. Some of them have dozens of definitions.

PUBLISHING – Academics took over publishing trappings from physics. As to the content of the stuff, it is often appalling. Academics compensate for the absence of reason by unintelligible writing.

ASSESSING OTHER’S WORK – Integrity in science is gauged by the scruples and thoroughness of assessments.
–ACADEME – The mutual admiration society of academia lets anything fly: fantasies, wishful thinking, kindergarten logic, etc., etc. [6], [7], [8].

RIGOR – Academia like to harangue about rigor, but they have a vague idea of what it means in real science. Their rigor is pseudo-rigor; it is in essence rigor mortis, mortification of marketing [9].

PHYSICS VS. CLIENTO-MARKETING

There are a lot of exciting parallels between physics and practical cliento-marketing.

PHENOMENOLOGY AND MICRO-LEVEL – Physicists work at both phenomenological and micro- levels, the former being rooted in the latter. A counterpart of micro-level in cliento-marketing is the Client. Client insights enable a cliento-marketer to work out effective product-selling information and to plan the selling effort.

MEASUREMENTS – Measurements in cliento-marketing resemble those in quantum mechanics, where objects are so delicate that the very act of measurement destroys them. Precisely this happens when market researchers crudely probe into the mind of the Client to get just “truthful lies.”

CREATIVITY AND IMAGINATION – For Feynman “scientific creativity is imagination in a straitjacket.” Einstein: “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” Theodore Levitt “to exercise the imagination is to be creative… It is distinguished from other forms of imagination by the unique insights it brings to understanding customers, their problems and the means to capture their attention and their customs.”

The first edition (1967) of Kotler’s tome carried a chapter on “Marketing creativity,” but then Kotler quietly removed it. Nigel Piercy [10]: “My suspicion is that the reason is simple – lecturers and professors using the textbook did not want it to remain, because they want to teach theory, structure and systems, not creativity.” Piercy inquires: “When did we forget about creativity in marketing?”

Well, perhaps it is time to recall about creativity to save marketing? What do you think, gentlemen?

PHYSICAL THINKING VS. MARKETING THINKING – My experience in practical marketing has shown to me that the ways a physicist and a cliento-marketer progress to their decisions have much in common. Marketing thinking differs in that its object is the human being (the Client), and so a cliento-marketer should be able not only to THINK for the Client, but also to FEEL for the Client.

I have laid down the essence of what I view as proper marketing thinking and ways it can be employed as a down-to-earth tool in my book “Marketing Thinking, or Clientomania.” [11]. I have reworked the text for the second edition and can send its electronic version for comments. It is basically what I teach and use in my consulting work.

REFERENCES

1. Alan Tapp, “”

2. Richard Feynmann, “”

3.

4. Bruce W. Marcus, “”

5. Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg, “Counter-Intuitive Marketing”

6. Alexander Repiev,

7. Alexander Repiev, “”

8. Alexander Repiev, “”

9. Jorge E. Allende, “”

10. Nigel Piercy, “Market-Led Strategic Change,” Third Edition (Chartered Institute of Marketing)

11. Alexander Repiev, I have drastically reworked the text for the second edition. I can send its electronic version for comments.

 

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Alexander Repiev
Moscow, Russia
;
info@horses.ru
+7 (499) 194-52-21

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