Physicists Reading Physics

Reading, as well as writing, is a constructive activity. Interviews and observations of research physicists reveal reading processes permeated with individual purposes and schema. These schema, or personal maps of the field, include not only consensual knowledge about the phenomena being discussed, but also perceptions as to the most promising lines of current work, methods that are most likely to produce good results, and personal knowledge about the other workers in the field. Schema thus are formed around the active research purposes of the reader. Equally, purposes are framed within the researcher's schematic understanding of the field. With schema and purposes evolving dialectically, texts are read, not as static arguments, but as part of the dynamic process of research activity.