10 ms·

It's a somewhat selective history. Off the top of my head: Kepler developed his ideas while at the University of Graz. [16th century] Galileo built his first

by biofox 1y ago

It's a somewhat selective history. Off the top of my head: Kepler developed his ideas while at the University of Graz. [16th century] Galileo built his first telescopes while a professor at the University of Padua. [16th - 17th century] Newton did all of his work while at Cambridge (although, admittedly, it took the plague and a lockdown for him to have his annus mirabilis). [17th century] William of Ockham (of Razor fame) did his work at Oxford. [14th century] Giordano Bruno did the work that got him burnt at the stake while at the University of Paris (and briefly Oxford). [16th century] Roger Bacon developed the scientific method while at Oxford. [13th century]

bonoboTP 1y ago
Still, it may be surprising to learn that these weren't doing their famous work within the university system: Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Descartes, Pascal, Huygens, Leibniz, Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, Leeuwenhoek, Halley, Spinoza, Hobbes, Cavendish. Kepler didn't get a professorship and did his most famous work (elliptical orbits, Kepler's Laws) later in Prague as imperial mathematician. Newton is the main one who indeed was a prof in Cambridge during his main works.
- griffzhowl 1y ago
  They were all educated at universities though.
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    Yes, but the point is that universities weren't places of research, but learning/teaching.
    - analog31 1y ago
      It could be that interest in research itself is a relatively recent development. A lot of scholarship amounted to study of past scholarship, until science came along. Empirical science as we know it was barely a century old when Newton came along.
    - checker659 1y ago
      The article doesn't say much about the role of religion in this matter. Surely what one could study was limited by what was allowed by the church.
oersted 1y ago
The article does state that professors did do research, but in their free time. For the examples you listed, were their famous research achievements really part of their university job description? Otherwise it’s more like Nietzsche working as an undertaker or Einstein working in the patent office just to support themselves. Naturally many such people would opt to be teachers to get by, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the university was a research institution. Earlier many philosophers and mathematicians were also priests or monks, that’s also a lifestyle that allows for research without worrying about supporting yourself. Similarly during the scientific revolution it was mostly hobbyist aristocrats that drove it, those who had the means to support themselves while doing free research. It’s the same story with most famous artists actually, even now. Most of open-source even operates that way, and it’s an important foundation of our modern world. I don’t really know what to do about that, it’s not like giving everyone universal income would work either, most people do not have this impulse. And grant systems are pretty flawed too. But there is some important insight in the observation of how much has been achieved by people trying to do cool things as a hobby. It’s just really hard to support that systematically, almost by definition.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  > Similarly during the scientific revolution it was mostly hobbyists aristocrats that drove it, those who had the means to support themselves while doing free research. I think this is overexaggerated in the popular consciousness. Most of the famous intellectuals weren't really big aristocrats. Yes they mostly didn't come from dirt poor peasant or serf families. But they also weren't, with some exceptions, highest nobility. It was much more common that they secured funding through patronage from or got hired by the aristocrats. The aristocrats didn't really do the hard work themselves, again with some exceptions.
  - oersted 1y ago
    Indeed, the way I expressed it was an oversimplification. I generally wanted to make the point that they were people that weren’t forced to have a tiring full-time job just to get by, and that research was not really their job, with patronage as middle ground.
ricksunny 1y ago
That’s an impressive off-the-cuff cataloguing - few could do that.

by biofox 1y ago

bonoboTP 1y ago

Still, it may be surprising to learn that these weren't doing their famous work within the university system: Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Descartes, Pascal, Huygens, Leibniz, Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, Leeuwenhoek, Halley, Spinoza, Hobbes, Cavendish. Kepler didn't get a professorship and did his most famous work (elliptical orbits, Kepler's Laws) later in Prague as imperial mathematician. Newton is the main one who indeed was a prof in Cambridge during his main works.

griffzhowl 1y ago
They were all educated at universities though.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  Yes, but the point is that universities weren't places of research, but learning/teaching.
  - analog31 1y ago
    It could be that interest in research itself is a relatively recent development. A lot of scholarship amounted to study of past scholarship, until science came along. Empirical science as we know it was barely a century old when Newton came along.
  - checker659 1y ago
    The article doesn't say much about the role of religion in this matter. Surely what one could study was limited by what was allowed by the church.

oersted 1y ago

The article does state that professors did do research, but in their free time. For the examples you listed, were their famous research achievements really part of their university job description? Otherwise it’s more like Nietzsche working as an undertaker or Einstein working in the patent office just to support themselves. Naturally many such people would opt to be teachers to get by, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the university was a research institution. Earlier many philosophers and mathematicians were also priests or monks, that’s also a lifestyle that allows for research without worrying about supporting yourself. Similarly during the scientific revolution it was mostly hobbyist aristocrats that drove it, those who had the means to support themselves while doing free research. It’s the same story with most famous artists actually, even now. Most of open-source even operates that way, and it’s an important foundation of our modern world. I don’t really know what to do about that, it’s not like giving everyone universal income would work either, most people do not have this impulse. And grant systems are pretty flawed too. But there is some important insight in the observation of how much has been achieved by people trying to do cool things as a hobby. It’s just really hard to support that systematically, almost by definition.

bonoboTP 1y ago
> Similarly during the scientific revolution it was mostly hobbyists aristocrats that drove it, those who had the means to support themselves while doing free research. I think this is overexaggerated in the popular consciousness. Most of the famous intellectuals weren't really big aristocrats. Yes they mostly didn't come from dirt poor peasant or serf families. But they also weren't, with some exceptions, highest nobility. It was much more common that they secured funding through patronage from or got hired by the aristocrats. The aristocrats didn't really do the hard work themselves, again with some exceptions.
- oersted 1y ago
  Indeed, the way I expressed it was an oversimplification. I generally wanted to make the point that they were people that weren’t forced to have a tiring full-time job just to get by, and that research was not really their job, with patronage as middle ground.

ricksunny 1y ago

That’s an impressive off-the-cuff cataloguing - few could do that.