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Will There Ever Be Another Scientific Genius?

6 points by Irene 14y ago

lutusp 14y ago
> There may never be another scientific genius on the level of Einstein, Newton, Darwin or Copernicus, one prominent US psychology professor claims in a recently published article. If psychology were a science, I might take this claim more seriously. > “When was the last time that someone forced us to rewrite the textbooks in some domain? Or even create an entirely new domain from scratch? Can you think of anybody since DNA?” DNA dates back to 1953. Since then people have invented the laser, the integrated circuit, modern computing, spaceflight, robotics, and have completely overhauled physics at the most complex and creative level. Because of advances in mathematics and physical theory, we now know that most of our earlier assumptions about the universe were wrong -- we only understand 4% of the universe's mass-energy, which leaves a huge playground for genius, and there are plenty of very smart people trying to craft theories to match the new observations. The problem is not a shortage of very smart people, the problem is that most modern science is applied. The resources available for pure research -- the kind of research that produces entirely new fields of knowledge -- is much smaller as a percentage of total science spending than it was in the past. There is every indication that the probability for the appearance of a very bright person is either unchanged, or greater than the past. As to whether society can identify and exploit such intellectual potential is another question. But one thing is certain -- psychologists will continue to get it wrong, in the most basic ways.
- nessus42 14y ago
  > If psychology were a science, I might take this claim more seriously. The problem is not that psychology is not a science. The problem is that psychology has not had its Einstein yet. Well, actually it has: Marvin Minsky and his Society of Mind. Unfortunately, not enough other psychologists have listened to him. Yet.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > The problem is not that psychology is not a science. The problem is that psychology has not had its Einstein yet. Not really. Remember that psychology's topic is the mind, not the brain (the latter is the province of neuroscience). Because the mind isn't a physical thing, it's not open to empirical science. This is why psychologists differ in diverse and fundamental ways -- there's no way to resolve disputes using objective evidence on which different observers can agree (the essence of experimental science). When a doctor wants to identify and treat a disease, she takes micrographs and DNA sequences, locates a treatment that has been proven to work, then exhaustively validates treatments in clinical trials -- all before declaring that a new disease has been identified and a meaningful treatment exists. When a psychologist wants to identify a disease, he gets together with other like-minded psychologists and they vote. It was not by clinical trials that grief at the passing of a loved one, and childhood tantrums, were recognized as diseases and entered into the forthcoming DSM-V, it was by secret votes. Asperger Syndrome was added to DSM-IV by voting, not by science, and it is being removed from DSM-V by (now-secret) votes after much public controversy over whether it's a disease at all. Homosexuality was added to an earlier DSM by votes, and removed later by votes -- no science was involved, but public opinion certainly played a part in both decisions. These examples show that psychology is more political than it is scientific. When a disease is entered into psychology's "bible", it is only after psychologists decide the public wants it that way. And the reverse -- when a disease is taken out of the DSM, it's because of public disapproval, not science or clinical trials. For these reasons we're witnessing a gradual move away from psychology toward neuroscience, where objective evidence can be acquired instead of the opinions of psychologists. The present director of the NIMH agrees with this view and is advocating it, recently saying, "In most areas of medicine, doctors have historically tried to glean something about the underlying cause of a patient's illness before figuring out a treatment that addresses the source of the problem. When it came to mental or behavioral disorders in the past, however, no physical cause was detectable so the problem was long assumed by doctors to be solely "mental," and psychological therapies followed suit. Today scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories, yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses." Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circuits http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circ... More here: http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology
ArbitraryLimits 14y ago
There probably won't be any more scientific breakthroughs that mess with people's conception of their place in the world the way relativity and quantum mechanics did. That's not the same thing as no more breakthroughs.
Houshalter 14y ago
The low hanging fruit in major fields has long been picked clean. It's not that there's fewer smart people, if anything there are far more than ever in history, it's that discoveries that haven't been made yet are becoming scarcer and scarcer, and the ones that remain are only still there because they are so far out of reach.

6 points by Irene 14y ago

> There may never be another scientific genius on the level of Einstein, Newton, Darwin or Copernicus, one prominent US psychology professor claims in a recently published article. If psychology were a science, I might take this claim more seriously. > “When was the last time that someone forced us to rewrite the textbooks in some domain? Or even create an entirely new domain from scratch? Can you think of anybody since DNA?” DNA dates back to 1953. Since then people have invented the laser, the integrated circuit, modern computing, spaceflight, robotics, and have completely overhauled physics at the most complex and creative level. Because of advances in mathematics and physical theory, we now know that most of our earlier assumptions about the universe were wrong -- we only understand 4% of the universe's mass-energy, which leaves a huge playground for genius, and there are plenty of very smart people trying to craft theories to match the new observations. The problem is not a shortage of very smart people, the problem is that most modern science is applied. The resources available for pure research -- the kind of research that produces entirely new fields of knowledge -- is much smaller as a percentage of total science spending than it was in the past. There is every indication that the probability for the appearance of a very bright person is either unchanged, or greater than the past. As to whether society can identify and exploit such intellectual potential is another question. But one thing is certain -- psychologists will continue to get it wrong, in the most basic ways.

nessus42 14y ago
> If psychology were a science, I might take this claim more seriously. The problem is not that psychology is not a science. The problem is that psychology has not had its Einstein yet. Well, actually it has: Marvin Minsky and his Society of Mind. Unfortunately, not enough other psychologists have listened to him. Yet.
- lutusp 14y ago
  > The problem is not that psychology is not a science. The problem is that psychology has not had its Einstein yet. Not really. Remember that psychology's topic is the mind, not the brain (the latter is the province of neuroscience). Because the mind isn't a physical thing, it's not open to empirical science. This is why psychologists differ in diverse and fundamental ways -- there's no way to resolve disputes using objective evidence on which different observers can agree (the essence of experimental science). When a doctor wants to identify and treat a disease, she takes micrographs and DNA sequences, locates a treatment that has been proven to work, then exhaustively validates treatments in clinical trials -- all before declaring that a new disease has been identified and a meaningful treatment exists. When a psychologist wants to identify a disease, he gets together with other like-minded psychologists and they vote. It was not by clinical trials that grief at the passing of a loved one, and childhood tantrums, were recognized as diseases and entered into the forthcoming DSM-V, it was by secret votes. Asperger Syndrome was added to DSM-IV by voting, not by science, and it is being removed from DSM-V by (now-secret) votes after much public controversy over whether it's a disease at all. Homosexuality was added to an earlier DSM by votes, and removed later by votes -- no science was involved, but public opinion certainly played a part in both decisions. These examples show that psychology is more political than it is scientific. When a disease is entered into psychology's "bible", it is only after psychologists decide the public wants it that way. And the reverse -- when a disease is taken out of the DSM, it's because of public disapproval, not science or clinical trials. For these reasons we're witnessing a gradual move away from psychology toward neuroscience, where objective evidence can be acquired instead of the opinions of psychologists. The present director of the NIMH agrees with this view and is advocating it, recently saying, "In most areas of medicine, doctors have historically tried to glean something about the underlying cause of a patient's illness before figuring out a treatment that addresses the source of the problem. When it came to mental or behavioral disorders in the past, however, no physical cause was detectable so the problem was long assumed by doctors to be solely "mental," and psychological therapies followed suit. Today scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories, yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses." Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circuits http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circ... More here: http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology

ArbitraryLimits 14y ago

There probably won't be any more scientific breakthroughs that mess with people's conception of their place in the world the way relativity and quantum mechanics did. That's not the same thing as no more breakthroughs.

Houshalter 14y ago

The low hanging fruit in major fields has long been picked clean. It's not that there's fewer smart people, if anything there are far more than ever in history, it's that discoveries that haven't been made yet are becoming scarcer and scarcer, and the ones that remain are only still there because they are so far out of reach.