Interestingly, this type of entrenchment has not changed in my opinion.
There is always a professor of distinguished, but long forgotten and superseded past-expertise on the orals.
They will insist on nuanced competence in an area no longer necessary to forge ahead. They become petty and claw with every breath to maintain relevance, despite all the others on the panel fully aware of the opposite.
Academia is a cesspool of barely-mediocrity, envy, and jealousy with pockets of brilliance flashing up time to time.
> There is always a professor of distinguished, but long forgotten and superseded past-expertise on the orals.
Wait, are you claiming that knowledge of experimental physics is "long forgotten and superseded"? As a mathematician, I'm all for recognising the importance of theoretical physics, and think that there's no reason a good theoretical physicist has also to be a good experimental physicist—but I wouldn't go so far as casting experimental physics on the dustheap! From the relatively sparse information given, the questions asked, about the operation of basic optical instruments like the telescope and the microscope, do not seem like questions that are excessively recondite; they do seem to indicate a basis lack of competence as an experimental physicist (which Heisenberg neither was nor apparently much wanted to be).
When I read the article, I gathered that there was a necessity for expert in A to make orals in B because their style of presentation. To achieve acceptance at B, there were non-relevant to A requirements.
The goal of qualifying exams to produce well-rounded students---or at least ensure that they are minimally aware of the major intellectual traditions in their field.
It's not crazy to expect that a soon-to-be physics professor understands how a battery works, at least roughly.
> When I read the article, I gathered that there was a necessity for expert in A to make orals in B because their style of presentation. To achieve acceptance at B, there were non-relevant to A requirements.
But you did not say "knowledge in A is not relevant to B" (itself an arguable claim, as my sibling commenter mattkrause points out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33910025 )); you seemed to be dismissing the validity of "knowledge in A" entirely ("There is always a professor of distinguished, but long forgotten and superseded past-expertise on the orals"). If you meant only the milder claim you make here, then, not being a physicist, I do not think I am qualified to judge, and so withdraw my objection.
Did we read the same thing? The article goes on to describe that the exact thing that the professor insisted was important for Heisenberg to know, was later on important for Heisenberg to know.
OTOH, I will submit that oral exams can really test familiarity of a subject well.
I found this in my own high school and university orals - I prepared much better for those and probably remember to this day many things I would have otherwise forgotten. I also found the exams absolutely terrifying, there's just no easy way to bullshit your way out. My examiners weren't mean at all.
Lem (of course!) expands on that in his Pilot Pirx stories esp. [1]. He agrees with you ;)
There is always a professor of distinguished, but long forgotten and superseded past-expertise on the orals.
They will insist on nuanced competence in an area no longer necessary to forge ahead. They become petty and claw with every breath to maintain relevance, despite all the others on the panel fully aware of the opposite.
Academia is a cesspool of barely-mediocrity, envy, and jealousy with pockets of brilliance flashing up time to time.
In my opinion.