I learned about the "spherical cow" metaphor in theoretical physics in the first chapter of Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's The Disordered Cosmos. "Approximate the cow as a sphere" is a running joke for simplification of highly complex systems into symmetrical ones for easier calculations at the cost of representation. This visual metaphor characterises one aspect of the culture of particle physics today.
Karen Barad's book Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) prompted Chanda Prescod-Weinstein to question her attachment to the Standard Model and scientific reductionism. Barad's statement -- “particle physics… is the ultimate manifestation of the tendency toward scientific reductionism.” -- leads Chanda to question her history of learning:
“how I might perceive all of this if I were not a product of an educational system rooted in Euro-American precepts. Would I still be fascinated by the layered hierarchy of particle physics, and all of its attending nomenclature? Or did my education give me the capacity to find particle physics deeply exciting, despite its juxtaposition with the nuclear weapons development that helped turn modern particle physics into a line of work? After all, I’ve known since I was a kid that particle physics was tied to the legacy of nuclear weapons.”
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein identifies with Radiohead's song "Everything in its Right Place" as played in the movie Vanilla Sky:
“The song, which Radiohead’s lead singer Thom Yorke has explained is about depression, is an ominous foreshadowing of the dystopian direction that the film goes in. My experience with particle physics has something in common with this juxtaposition. I feel comfortable, extremely comfortable in fact, with how the Standard Model tends to locate particles in their correct mathematical structure, in their right place. But I am also low-key worried, on the regular, that finding comfort in this makes it difficult for me to see the larger physical picture, or perhaps is a refusal to see the larger picture. When I think about this, I too have Radiohead playing in the background. In my heart, I fight with the history of the Standard Model of particle physics and the motivation behind it, but also every time I think I can’t deal with physics or physicists anymore, it is the Standard Model that makes me stop in my tracks and think, “Wow.”
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein starts The Disordered Cosmos by appealing to the neatly ordered story of the Standard Model of Particle Physics that deepened her attachment to physics. This attraction also produced internal tensions as she learned about the (white, male) history of quantum mechanics:
"I learned that I particularly enjoy a neatly ordered tale of an organized universe that can come off like a delicately constructed sum of its parts.. The way I have inhaled particle physics enmeshes me with this historical trajectory. But I am still also one natural conclusion of a Black child dreaming of quarks—not because quarks could serve state interests, but because quarks nourished the soul. The Standard Model? It is how I fell in love for the first time.”