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Historias > Elogio de la vaca esférica
2019-02-11
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Este fin de semana pasado, en una reunión pantagruélica de buenos amigos, uno de ellos, una de las personas más inteligentes que conozco, reprochaba amablemente en el curso de una acalorada discusión esa costumbre que, decía, tenemos los físicos (yo lo soy, al fin y al cabo) de atrevernos con todo y además hacerlo con una vaca esférica...
Y no le quito la razón al hecho, aunque sí niego la consecuencia que se suele pretender con ese comentario, que es inhabilitar al físico a establecer una argumentación válida más allá de su campo de investigación. Cierto que me reconozco cierta tendencia a analizar todo con esa herramienta tan de la física que convierte de repente un problema (o un chuletón, llegado el caso, la ética de los mercados o el precio de la soja...) en algo por lo que comenzar, es decir, una vaca esférica.
La vaca esférica es una metáfora de un cierto reduccionismo científico, de cómo a veces intentando hacer un modelo científico de un problema real se alcanza un estado de abstracción absurdo o completamente irreal. No he conseguido encontrar buenas referencias sobre el origen de esta chanza, el libro de John Harte
"Consider a Spherical Cow: A Course in Environmental Problem Solving" se publicó en 1988 y pasa por ser la primera publicación al respecto (aunque Alan Turing en su artículo seminal de 1952 sobre morfogénesis hablaba de sistemas con simetría esférica que no podrían resultar en organismo "como un caballo". La referencia:
"The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis", en The Essential Turing"). De forma que la historia de la vaca esférica debe ser necesariamente anterior: recuerdo un curso en el que participé a mediados de los años ochenta en la escuela NATO/ASI de Les Houches (por la que por cierto fuimos pasando incontables generaciones de personas licenciadas en física) en la que se nos presentó el chiste, en un curso sobre mecánica de fluidos en los que para reducir a los casos de interés las ecuaciones diferenciales que los gobiernan, esto es, la poliforme ecuación de Navier-Stokes, no había manera de no caer en una cierta esfericidad de la vaca... Fue un mes lleno de vacas esféricas y de física pintada en las pizarras realmente estimulante, tanto como los Alpes franceses.
En la
entrada sobre la vaca esférica de la wikipedia se plantea el origen en un "chiste de físicos teóricos":
Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking for help from academia. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars then returned to the university, notebooks crammed with data, where the task of writing the report was left to the team leader. Shortly thereafter the physicist returned to the farm, saying to the farmer, "I have the solution, but it works only in the case of spherical cows in a vacuum".
En otros lugares (por ejemplo
aquí en Nosololinux_) el chiste aparece como uno de esos de matemáticos, ingenieros y físicos:
Un profesor de la Facultad de Ciencias decide hacer un experimento y plantear a un matemático, a un ingeniero (de lo que sea, somos todos lo mismo) y a un físico el mismo problema: calcular el volumen que ocupa una vaca.
El matemático responde: “Dividamos las curvas de la vaca en funciones de forma que podamos calcular la integral de volumen de la intersección de las mismas. También podríamos dividir la vaca en poliedros más sencillos, calcular los volúmenes de estos y sumarlos todos.”
El ingeniero, tras meditar un rato contesta: “Llenemos una gran cuba con agua. Si introducimos la vaca en la cuba, de manera que el agua la cubra completamente, podemos cuantificar el ascenso del nivel y a partir de este dato calcular el volumen, aplicando un par de ecuaciones que no recuerdo, pero que vienen en los libros”.
Entonces todos miran al físico, que tras un momento de silencio comienza dicendo “Supongamos que la vaca es una esfera…”
Bien, seguro que han escuchado alguna de estas versiones u otra similar. Y que la metáfora se entiende: aunque el criterio de la ciencia de la parsimonia o navaja de Occam nos incita siempre a no complicar las explicaciones más allá de lo necesario, pareciera que los físicos (y las físicas) nos llevamos dedicando desde siempre a extender la navaja limando la realidad de toda aspereza para conseguir, acaso como primera aproximación, un problema que podamos resolver teóricamente: una vaca esférica.
Es cierto que la chanza habitualmente desdeña un hecho cierto: es mejor tener un modelo sencillo con una vaca esférica que no tener más que especulaciones sin hacer cuentas, o lo que es peor, anteponer la creencia a lo que nos permitirá la regla de cálculo llegado el caso.
Y no es menos cierto que a veces se olvida que el compromiso de quien desde la física ha propuesto en primer grado de aproximación pensar en una vaca esférica está en ir introduciendo las perturbaciones a esa vaca esférica que permitan acercar el modelo cada vez mejor al caso en estudio. Perturbaciones e interacciones entre los diferentes niveles: esto es algo que a menudo se olvida, más cuando se nos acusa a los físicos (y las físicas) de cierta arrogancia intelectual a la hora de meternos en cualquier sarao no solamente teniendo una opinión, sino además pretendiendo tener una opinión razonada y basada en algo mensurable.
No sin reconocer, en este elogio de la vaca esférica, que en muchas ocasiones este reduccionismo tampoco va a permitir una solución global del problema. Pero en el camino nos habrá quedado alguna reflexión interesante, sin duda un par de nuevas miradas o de variables que de otra manera no habrían sido consideradas.
Es decir, y con eso concluiré por el momento este elogio, si ser físico no nos da la razón, tampoco nos impide afrontar problemas que no son tan simples (por cierto: ¿simples? JA) como los sistemas físicos con un criterio igualmente analítico y teórico. Y, a pesar de todo, seguimos siendo unos tipos ciertamente curiosos, incluso sin tener necesariamente sociopatías o trastornos del espectro autista en diverso grado.
2019-02-11 09:09 Enlace
Referencias (TrackBacks)
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2019-02-11