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Just today I read some comment about „Science is slowing down“, but honestly, there is so much astonishing progress (like this one) purely motivated by curiosit

• taneq 8y ago
  I'm personally convinced that the "science is slowing down" perception is a consequence of actual progress speeding up while the time taken for new discoveries to percolate into the common consciousness is increasing. You look back on discoveries that have had time to percolate, and you see a rapid ramp up. Then you look at the past few years, and you see less going on because it's all still in labs and obscure research papers and the like. Also, it's hard to know which discoveries are hugely important when they're still drowned out in dross. It's like the way '70s music is "the best music", because we've forgotten the tons and tons of crud '70s music.
  • jmcqk6 8y ago
    There is an effect where the progress of science can stay the same, but the progress is in expanding details. So instead of Einstein reshaping our understanding of spacetime, we gain a more detailed understanding of the consequences of that discovery. The average cosmologist these days probably has a superior understanding of relativity than even Einstein did. Consider the map of human knowledge to be an ever expanding tree. If you have growth happening at the same rate, it can seem slower, because it's hard to grasp the full breadth of the growth now. I don't know if I'm explaining it that well. Our understanding of the universe is extremely detailed compared to even 50 years ago, and we continue to advance rapidly. It's just that advancement is spread out much more, and is much, much more detailed and nuanced.