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"virtually all of mankind’s greatest achievements, such as science, religion and government, are based fundamentally on cooperation" Science isn't based on coo

by hnriot 14y ago

"virtually all of mankind’s greatest achievements, such as science, religion and government, are based fundamentally on cooperation" Science isn't based on cooperation at all, maybe some scientific accomplishments have been the result if cooperation, there's an awful lot of that has been done by individuals. And listing religion as one of mankind's greatest achievements is ludicrous, and cooperation had nothing to do with it.

bunderbunder 14y ago
While there's a whole lot of small cases of individual achievement in science, the enterprise as a whole depends heavily on cooperation. Newton didn't work on a team. But he did share his work with others, and the ones who thought he was doing interesting things shared his insights with still more people, until his discoveries were widely disseminated. In return, he's widely recognized and credited as the founder of modern physics. And that kind of arrangement is frequently what cooperation looks like on a grand scale.
- klenwell 14y ago
  The same point from a slightly different angle: In The Information, James Gleick notes that Cambridge was a mathematical backwater after Newton -- due to its uncritical reverence for Newton and ignorance of subsequent advancements on the continent -- until Babbage came around in the 19th c. to shake things up.
rpm4321 14y ago
Hate to disagree so thoroughly with you, but... 1. "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants." - Isaac Newton - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton 2. "Sky Cake!" - Patton Oswalt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w
- lmm 14y ago
  The Newton quote was less an expression of humility than a dig at Hooke.
  - rpm4321 14y ago
    The point stands, though. There's certainly variance between the accomplishments of specific individuals, but each little innovation builds on the last. Each breakthrough is dependent on the ones that preceded it. Even an inventor working in solitude is collaborating in a way with all the inventors, discoverers, and authors who influenced him.
_delirium 14y ago
There's very little of modern science that looks anything like an isolated hermit doing research on their own. Everything is heavily cooperation-based these days. Sometimes in a formal sense, of large teams or initiatives like the LHC, and other times in a more informal sense, like the large amount of dialog and idea-swapping that goes on around arXiv.org. There's probably a bit more of the "lone genius" sort of work in mathematics, but even there, cooperative initiatives are probably the norm. Erdős was famously collaborative, and a lot of progress has come from group initiatives, such as the Bourbaki group. Nowadays, folks such as Terry Tao and Tim Gowers are pushing "massively collaborative mathematics" as a promising direction for mathematical research to go. The idea is that almost a whole sector of mathematics would pitch in around a wiki (e.g. the Polymath Project) to try to solve a major open problem together, rather than small teams competing to scoop each other on incremental papers.
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
This is the epitome of a "middle-brow" comment on HN. It takes issue with a nearly inconsequential piece of the original article and does nothing more than say, "that's wrong", but does it in a way that sounds important.

by hnriot 14y ago

bunderbunder 14y ago

While there's a whole lot of small cases of individual achievement in science, the enterprise as a whole depends heavily on cooperation. Newton didn't work on a team. But he did share his work with others, and the ones who thought he was doing interesting things shared his insights with still more people, until his discoveries were widely disseminated. In return, he's widely recognized and credited as the founder of modern physics. And that kind of arrangement is frequently what cooperation looks like on a grand scale.

klenwell 14y ago
The same point from a slightly different angle: In The Information, James Gleick notes that Cambridge was a mathematical backwater after Newton -- due to its uncritical reverence for Newton and ignorance of subsequent advancements on the continent -- until Babbage came around in the 19th c. to shake things up.

rpm4321 14y ago

Hate to disagree so thoroughly with you, but... 1. "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants." - Isaac Newton - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton 2. "Sky Cake!" - Patton Oswalt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w

lmm 14y ago
The Newton quote was less an expression of humility than a dig at Hooke.
- rpm4321 14y ago
  The point stands, though. There's certainly variance between the accomplishments of specific individuals, but each little innovation builds on the last. Each breakthrough is dependent on the ones that preceded it. Even an inventor working in solitude is collaborating in a way with all the inventors, discoverers, and authors who influenced him.

_delirium 14y ago

There's very little of modern science that looks anything like an isolated hermit doing research on their own. Everything is heavily cooperation-based these days. Sometimes in a formal sense, of large teams or initiatives like the LHC, and other times in a more informal sense, like the large amount of dialog and idea-swapping that goes on around arXiv.org. There's probably a bit more of the "lone genius" sort of work in mathematics, but even there, cooperative initiatives are probably the norm. Erdős was famously collaborative, and a lot of progress has come from group initiatives, such as the Bourbaki group. Nowadays, folks such as Terry Tao and Tim Gowers are pushing "massively collaborative mathematics" as a promising direction for mathematical research to go. The idea is that almost a whole sector of mathematics would pitch in around a wiki (e.g. the Polymath Project) to try to solve a major open problem together, rather than small teams competing to scoop each other on incremental papers.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago

This is the epitome of a "middle-brow" comment on HN. It takes issue with a nearly inconsequential piece of the original article and does nothing more than say, "that's wrong", but does it in a way that sounds important.