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Who says modern scientists are dull? Compared to when? Is it really necessary to knock down every straw man one can conceive of?
by michael_dorfman 17y ago
Who says modern scientists are dull? Compared to when?
Is it really necessary to knock down every straw man one can conceive of?
- smanek 17y agoCompared to Feynman or Erdős or Tesla ;-)
- michael_dorfman 17y agoFeynman and Erdős aren't modern? How about Hawking? I mean,"alive" would have to count for something in the "modern" department, right?
- Alex3917 17y agoIn the context of the article, I would consider modern to mean admitted into grad school later than 1985. It doesn't make sense to talk about people like Hawking because we're talking about the selection effects of school.
- michael_dorfman 17y agoSo, they don't really mean "modern", they mean "young". And they don't really measure a baseline of "dullness" for any preceding generation of young scientists. And of course it doesn't make sense to talk about Hawking, if he is a counter-example.
- jamesbritt 17y agoNit picker. :) I was watching the original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and there was one scene that stood out as marking this film as truly from another time. Klaatu is talking to the boy, asking him about who the famous scientists are. And the boy knows! And acts as if everyone in American knows! I gather there are many interesting contemporary scientists, but they simply get no attention in modern culture.
- smanek 17y agoI don't think it's a cultural thing - I just don't think modern scientists are as personally interesting (for the most part). Most people know of, say, Hawking or Perelman because of their personal stories. But even their lives aren't as near as compelling as the greats of the last generation. Not to mention the face that 50 years ago, the work being done was much more significant. I hate to say it, but no truly 'ground breaking' work has really been done in the last half century. There are still a lot of open questions - but we just haven't found the answer. We've just been refining our knowledge of the important work done before that. (Note: I don't mean to say no new work has been done, just nothing major. Name something done in the last 50 years that could compare to the fundamental work done in Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Genetics, Computation Theory, etc. before that.)
- calambrac 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model
- smanek 17y agoFine, you got me - that was 40 years ago, not 50 like I said ;-)
- calambrac 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project (for the list of interesting contemporary scientists, I'll nominate Venter. That guy is a trip.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractals All since 1970, is that recent enough? And, ya know, sometimes it does actually take a little time for major achievements to be recognized as such.
- smanek 17y agoWith all due respect to Hawking - I don't think he's anywhere near as interesting as Feynman or Erdos. Feynman traveled to Brazil to learn Bongo drums on whim, he worked in a Strip Club, mastered the art of the pickup, broke into TS safes at the Manhattan Project, was a well known painter under a pseudonym, etc. Erdos was basically homeless, and would show up at mathematician's doors unannounced looking for a roof - and while under their roof, would collaborate on some of the most ground breaking work of the century. He was a heavy drug user, active libertarian, etc. I'm sure Hawking can compete in terms of intellect or work (I have no idea - I'm not capable of judging), but he is nowhere near as interesting.
- Eliezer 17y agoOh, come on! Hawking's supposed to go mountain climbing or something? Guy's got a legitimate excuse.
- smanek 17y agoHawking's story is extraordinary - but you can fill books with entertaining anecdotes Feynman's exploits (in fact, they have). Hawkings probably 'wins' in terms of sheer impressiveness of what he has accomplished and what he has overcome. But I still stand by saying that Feynman was more entertaining.
- Zancarius 17y ago> But I still stand by saying that Feynman was more entertaining. I agree that Feynman is entertaining, and he's something of a legend. I do feel that Hawking is not just fascinating in his own right but he's AMAZINGLY inspirational. Given the adversity he has faced for much of his life, the fact that he still pursues his love of science should be a lesson to all of us. To call his story merely "extraordinary" is doing a grave disservice to such an incredible individual.
- calambrac 17y agoYou didn't say 'entertaining' before, you said 'interesting'.
- antiform 17y agoNo way. There are tons of people in the sciences with very interesting lives, they just don't have people knocking down their door to write popular biographies like Feynman, Erdös, or Tesla. I say that living mathematicians like John Nash Jr., Shing-tung Yau, and Alexander Grothendieck have much more interesting lives than the examples you mentioned.
- Alex3917 17y ago"Who says modern scientists are dull? Compared to when?" Compare non-fiction books of the 70s to non-fiction books today. With the exception of a couple people like Ray Kurzweil, our books today aren't a tenth as creative or brilliant. I'd argue that in most fields today scientists are just refining models created between the 60s and early 80s. Linguistics, educational theory, psychology, and organization behavior are all good examples of this.
- njm 17y agoThis is generally the case across the physical and life sciences too. Even "revolutionary" fields like epigenetics and genomics are effectively refinements and extensions of the pioneering work done in molecular biology during the 1960s and 70s. The same goes for particle physics, where the framework for the standard model is decades old. It seems that scientific innovation occurs in punctuated equilibria.
- Alex3917 17y agoThere's no question things go in S-curves, but I really get the feeling that the kind of people who did great work in the 60s and 70s generally aren't allowed to go into academia today. I personally would probably get a PhD in another life, but there's no point because academia is generally designed to filter people like me out, so I would have to spend 2-4 years convincing the right people to go to bat for me and it's just not worth it.
- dinkumthinkum 17y agoWhat exactly do you mean? I hear a lot of people put this kind of conspiracy theory view of academia out but I never really get the details.
- Alex3917 17y agoWhat I mean is that the best grad schools in the US are purposely designed to have an extreme bias toward selecting students with the best grades and the highest GRE scores. You can still get in without good grades and without taking the GRE if you've done very good research and have earned the trust of the right people, but it's very difficult. And even if you do get accepted, you'd probably face an uphill battle throughout your entire career.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]