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When I learnt about all the great scientist in school I was always amazed by their brilliance. However I always felt something was missing, what was so differe

by rtx 6y ago

When I learnt about all the great scientist in school I was always amazed by their brilliance. However I always felt something was missing, what was so different about them that they were able to achieve so much. Even though I had heard Newton's quote about standing on shoulder of giants I was never able to understand it fully till much later. All these brilliant discovery had a thread going back to the beginning of our civilization.

spockz 6y ago
It is not just standing on shoulders of giants. It is also that we only hear about the success stories and hardly ever of the long road that lead to the insights and theories. We do this in our era as well which makes it easy to someone as brilliant and think of yourself as not brilliant because you experience your own failures and struggles but only see the successes of others.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > It is also that we only hear about the success stories and hardly ever of the long road that lead to the insights and theories I have never truly understood a theory until I learned its broken precursors. One gets a taste of this in physics. Newton to special relativity. (I never got my head around GR.) Or earlier: the different models of atoms, from plum pudding to electron clouds. It’s a good tool poorly used outside a few examples.
- easton_s 6y ago
  Watching the Cosmos series those giants in their times were like Atlases carrying their work and the social sigma of trying to break dogma. Many of them suffered greatly for us to enjoy the elevated view.
samizdis 6y ago
> Even though I had heard Newton's quote about standing on shoulder of giants I was never able to understand it fully till much later. There's an article about this [1] that I enjoyed reading a few years back, titled Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Story Behind Newton’s Famous Metaphor for How Knowledge Progresses [1] https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/02/16/newton-standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/02/16/newton-standing-on-...
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Robert Hooke might be a little annoyed at that interpretation.
Angostura 6y ago
Darwin's generation was around the last who could have a full understanding of all branches of science. Biologists, Physicists, Geologists, Chemists would communicate frequenty through letters and meetings Having that cross-discipline expertise at a high level must have been amazing.
- nico_h 6y ago
  And right now we can have as full an understanding of science at they had without talking to anyone or sifting through private libraries spread through estates across the countries. And we have a century more of understanding and refinements we can explore should we so desire, all at the press of a button. They would only dream of the access to science and people we have now. Though twitter would be a poor medium to replace that era's epistolic cross-polination.
  - Angostura 6y ago
    Not really no. A single person can no longer know, grok even the whole of biology, or even the whole of molecular biology. Just having a detailed understanding of all the proteins on a mitchondion is a tall order. Yes, you can look it up. But that's not the same as having an intuitive feel for all of science at the deepest level.
    - whatshisface 6y ago
      The parents point is that you can identically reproduce the state of knowing what an 18th century polymath knew, today, just by learning a tiny amount of each subject.
      - Ericson2314 6y ago
        Still in the mold of https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/ https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-te..., we have accrued tons of "library debt" as we research more things but don't spend commensurately more effort organizing what we've learned. I would not be surprised if this was a huge contributor to the decreasing cost effectiveness of science.
jariel 6y ago
150 years ago, 90% of the planet were aboriginals or peasants, 9.9% were workers of some kind, 0.1% were rulers/nobility who were the class that needed to support these ideas, and there were just extremely few people dedicated to knowledge and science. Rich dudes, their patrons, sitting around pondering the meaning of life. There was a lot to be discovered and so few people trying to figure it out. Now we have millions of PhD's studying every little nook and cranny, the vast majority of research ever published will be read by only a small number of people and then forgotten, maybe forever. The marginal returns to effort now are extremely small.
- jariel 6y ago
  Edit: 'Professional Scientist' as we understand it is a little bit of a modern concept. Historically it was an interest, not necessarily always profession per sey although I guess by the time of Darwin it was more or less starting to be that [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society

by rtx 6y ago

spockz 6y ago

It is not just standing on shoulders of giants. It is also that we only hear about the success stories and hardly ever of the long road that lead to the insights and theories. We do this in our era as well which makes it easy to someone as brilliant and think of yourself as not brilliant because you experience your own failures and struggles but only see the successes of others.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> It is also that we only hear about the success stories and hardly ever of the long road that lead to the insights and theories I have never truly understood a theory until I learned its broken precursors. One gets a taste of this in physics. Newton to special relativity. (I never got my head around GR.) Or earlier: the different models of atoms, from plum pudding to electron clouds. It’s a good tool poorly used outside a few examples.
easton_s 6y ago
Watching the Cosmos series those giants in their times were like Atlases carrying their work and the social sigma of trying to break dogma. Many of them suffered greatly for us to enjoy the elevated view.

samizdis 6y ago

> Even though I had heard Newton's quote about standing on shoulder of giants I was never able to understand it fully till much later. There's an article about this [1] that I enjoyed reading a few years back, titled Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Story Behind Newton’s Famous Metaphor for How Knowledge Progresses [1] https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/02/16/newton-standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/02/16/newton-standing-on-...

selimthegrim 6y ago
Robert Hooke might be a little annoyed at that interpretation.

Angostura 6y ago

Darwin's generation was around the last who could have a full understanding of all branches of science. Biologists, Physicists, Geologists, Chemists would communicate frequenty through letters and meetings Having that cross-discipline expertise at a high level must have been amazing.

nico_h 6y ago
And right now we can have as full an understanding of science at they had without talking to anyone or sifting through private libraries spread through estates across the countries. And we have a century more of understanding and refinements we can explore should we so desire, all at the press of a button. They would only dream of the access to science and people we have now. Though twitter would be a poor medium to replace that era's epistolic cross-polination.
- Angostura 6y ago
  Not really no. A single person can no longer know, grok even the whole of biology, or even the whole of molecular biology. Just having a detailed understanding of all the proteins on a mitchondion is a tall order. Yes, you can look it up. But that's not the same as having an intuitive feel for all of science at the deepest level.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    The parents point is that you can identically reproduce the state of knowing what an 18th century polymath knew, today, just by learning a tiny amount of each subject.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      Still in the mold of https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/ https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-te..., we have accrued tons of "library debt" as we research more things but don't spend commensurately more effort organizing what we've learned. I would not be surprised if this was a huge contributor to the decreasing cost effectiveness of science.

jariel 6y ago

150 years ago, 90% of the planet were aboriginals or peasants, 9.9% were workers of some kind, 0.1% were rulers/nobility who were the class that needed to support these ideas, and there were just extremely few people dedicated to knowledge and science. Rich dudes, their patrons, sitting around pondering the meaning of life. There was a lot to be discovered and so few people trying to figure it out. Now we have millions of PhD's studying every little nook and cranny, the vast majority of research ever published will be read by only a small number of people and then forgotten, maybe forever. The marginal returns to effort now are extremely small.

jariel 6y ago
Edit: 'Professional Scientist' as we understand it is a little bit of a modern concept. Historically it was an interest, not necessarily always profession per sey although I guess by the time of Darwin it was more or less starting to be that [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society