There's a strong argument you can't really learn it without first learning the math, and it really needs to be in the order of math, physics, chemistry and biology. If you can't reason about it, don't have the foundation of that order of topics, can't do problem sets, is it really anything more than "a rote memorization of facts"?
Really, in the normal US curriculum biology is exactly that, because it doesn't require any math to speak of, then comes general chemistry because you can get by with algebra, but you don't have any real understanding of atoms etc. because you haven't done physics, critically E&M, but also classical mechanics. Then normally algebra based physics, since the US math track is so slow calculus comes too late.
But that's cargo cult physics, no one in the real world does it without the calculus. Heck, Newton invented his calculus to do the physics for which he's even more famous for, right?
As I mention in my other comment in this sub-thread, I consider myself lucky that my high school physics class was an automatic A class where the teacher just talked with us for the whole period. I learned a lot of useful things without doing stuff I'd have to unlearn in college.
A cargo cult understanding is probably superior to no understanding because science operates at different levels of abstraction. Most programmers have a cargo cult understanding of hardware for example.
Well, I'm talking about three levels of "understanding":
The "physics for poets" level I graduated high school with (including a great book on quantum chemistry I checked out from my local college's library, I think). This is useful, albeit dangerous as I've been saying, and enough to thrive at MIT with.
The cargo cult algebra based physics, only used in "education". E.g. the difference between Sears, Zemansky and Young's University Physics vs. College Physics
And calculus based physics.
My claim is that if you were to rank order their usefulness, it would be calculus, poets and then algebra way behind. I'd like to hear from some people who went from algebra to calculus based physics how that worked for them. I certainly found learning physics for real with calculus to be a joy....
ADDED: As for programmers and systems types ... yeah. While electronics intrinsically does nothing for me, I've always studied hardware to know how to build programs and systems better, and that's done me very well.
And the level of understanding can be appalling, we've had several discussions recently about big clusters failing at load and being replaces by a single system, often a surplus desktop, because the programmer had a clue.
Really, in the normal US curriculum biology is exactly that, because it doesn't require any math to speak of, then comes general chemistry because you can get by with algebra, but you don't have any real understanding of atoms etc. because you haven't done physics, critically E&M, but also classical mechanics. Then normally algebra based physics, since the US math track is so slow calculus comes too late.
But that's cargo cult physics, no one in the real world does it without the calculus. Heck, Newton invented his calculus to do the physics for which he's even more famous for, right?
As I mention in my other comment in this sub-thread, I consider myself lucky that my high school physics class was an automatic A class where the teacher just talked with us for the whole period. I learned a lot of useful things without doing stuff I'd have to unlearn in college.