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Cartoon: Alexander Vesely
What is Computational Physics?

Occidental literary tradition has it that insight may be obtained only by a deal with the devil. The lady who made the first such bargain is said to have made a mistake; but who is to say where we would stand today if she had refused that offer?

Physicists are seekers for insight; and we may well imagine that every one of us has made his particular deal. The experimentalist, for one, may have started negotiations by saying, ``What, your hornedness, will I get if I strictly exclude from the discussion everything that is not measurable?'' - The answer to this was certainly something like ``I promise you a lab full of shiny and ever more efficient measuring gadgetry. If you put yourself to it, you may obtain any number of hard facts - well, as hard as I can make them. And everyone who ever makes a statement in physics will have to refer to you. In fact, the very last sentence in any non-experimental paper will have to be `agreement with experimental results is fair,' or something very similar. - And of course you get a big chunk out of the research budget, because all that gadgetry costs a pretty penny.''

Further talks may have led to hints at a fast carreer, involving interesting but not so hard facts, but we will close the scene for now.

And then the theorist: ``What, Sir, is your offer if I forgo all shiny apparatus, using in my quest for truth nothing but my analytical mind, paper and pencil? Also, I will be content to study well-devised approximations to the puzzling pageant of reality; I call them models.'' - ``Well, you will achieve a high standing among your fellow researchers, resembling that of a man entering the jungle unarmed, or one climbing sheer cliffs with none but his rubber shoes. And once in a while you may be granted a glimpse of the grand view. Just an occasional glimpse - that is all I myself have access to.''

In answer to the theorist's further question whether there were 'absolutely no strings attached' the dark lord just gave a diabolical smile.

Finally, the computational physicist. ``What can I hope to gain? Like the theorist, I am willing to stick to models of reality. But like the experimentalist, I will be content to clad my results in humble numbers instead of magical formulae.'' - ``You are late in asking, my friend, although your kind has been around as long as the others. But if you agree to make extensive use of those machines that were first developed in my workshop, I am willing to give you a deal. Not being bound by a vow of analyticity, you will be able to really get at the bottom of those models you are speaking of. And free of the limitations of experiment, you may scrutinize systems your handy colleague can only dream of. Withal, you are entitled to have a go at all the problems your fellows had to leave unsolved, my promise being that once in a while you will indeed be able to crack one of those hard nuts. And maybe I can manage that some of the papers theorists write will actually end with `agreement with simulation results is fair'.''

There were no side offers made. - At least, none to speak of.

Franz J. Vesely