3 ms·

I suspect one can. This is because "progress" is pretty much never in a straight line from New York to San Francisco. It meanders all over the place, in circles

I suspect one can. This is because "progress" is pretty much never in a straight line from New York to San Francisco. It meanders all over the place, in circles, around the horn a few times, bumping into Africa, until it eventually blunders into San Francisco. Today, we can go directly from New York to SF in a straight line.

wholinator2 2y ago
_Eventually_ you can take the straight line, probably. But the process needs time to contract the unnecessary steps. There's still things we haven't completely contracted, is my feeling. Also, we shouldn't be so quick to throw away the original process of discovery. If our goal is to make scientists that can discover i think it'd be best to expose them to some of the real discovering. Like, the way fermi-dirac statistics is presented typically leaves out the rich process of discovery and understanding that took place, similarly with einsteins field equations. It leads young students into the thought that the big names are great, eldritch gods, completely incomprehensible in their genius. It begins to feel like you could never ever have made the discovery, because what you learned was not the discovery, it was the sum of 70 years since. I felt a great weight lift watching the sean carroll talk about _how_ Einstein made his equations. He explained the logic of each step, the assistance he needed to reach critical points, and generally made it human. I believe it was an RI talk. Then i remember some video about the process to find FD statistics to resolve the ultraviolet catastrophe and it was so enlightening. They aren't old gods, they're people that worked for decades to reach completely reasonable goals and we just don't teach it like that at all. It's incredibly discouraging to new students to never see that these people were mere mortals.

3 ms·

I suspect one can. This is because "progress" is pretty much never in a straight line from New York to San Francisco. It meanders all over the place, in circles

by WalterBright 2y ago

wholinator2 2y ago
_Eventually_ you can take the straight line, probably. But the process needs time to contract the unnecessary steps. There's still things we haven't completely contracted, is my feeling. Also, we shouldn't be so quick to throw away the original process of discovery. If our goal is to make scientists that can discover i think it'd be best to expose them to some of the real discovering. Like, the way fermi-dirac statistics is presented typically leaves out the rich process of discovery and understanding that took place, similarly with einsteins field equations. It leads young students into the thought that the big names are great, eldritch gods, completely incomprehensible in their genius. It begins to feel like you could never ever have made the discovery, because what you learned was not the discovery, it was the sum of 70 years since. I felt a great weight lift watching the sean carroll talk about _how_ Einstein made his equations. He explained the logic of each step, the assistance he needed to reach critical points, and generally made it human. I believe it was an RI talk. Then i remember some video about the process to find FD statistics to resolve the ultraviolet catastrophe and it was so enlightening. They aren't old gods, they're people that worked for decades to reach completely reasonable goals and we just don't teach it like that at all. It's incredibly discouraging to new students to never see that these people were mere mortals.