“All you can do in science is discover something before anyone else discovers it”
Mulling this over—maybe I’m taking a false view, but although I never had a particular admiration for the ‘race to the south pole’ type of exploration, the more general ‘Going where no one has gone before’ I do admire.
Because the second one does indeed do something—it establishes a new baseline that the next generation can start from. And so with Science—Newton described the real world with a precision greater than anyone before him, but off to the side Riemann established a new mathematics, which obviously had nothing to do with the real world, except of course Einstein proved it actually described the real world even better than Newton. And then of course the Quantum Theorist’s described a ‘Real World’ greater still.
I’ve no particular advocacy for ‘celebrity’ science that races to be the first to something we already know can be done, although assuredly the innovation fostered by friendly or unfriendly rivalry has it’s place, but science that actually expands our boundaries and tells us of new and different possibilities?
If I had the good fortune to be remembered for nothing more than have expanded the realms of possibility by setting up a base camp in unexplored science territory so someone smarter than I can mark ‘Here be Dragons’ a bit further out on the map, I could live with that - .
“All you can do in science is discover something before anyone else discovers it”
Mulling this over—maybe I’m taking a false view, but although I never had a particular admiration for the ‘race to the south pole’ type of exploration, the more general ‘Going where no one has gone before’ I do admire.
Because the second one does indeed do something—it establishes a new baseline that the next generation can start from. And so with Science—Newton described the real world with a precision greater than anyone before him, but off to the side Riemann established a new mathematics, which obviously had nothing to do with the real world, except of course Einstein proved it actually described the real world even better than Newton. And then of course the Quantum Theorist’s described a ‘Real World’ greater still.
I’ve no particular advocacy for ‘celebrity’ science that races to be the first to something we already know can be done, although assuredly the innovation fostered by friendly or unfriendly rivalry has it’s place, but science that actually expands our boundaries and tells us of new and different possibilities?
If I had the good fortune to be remembered for nothing more than have expanded the realms of possibility by setting up a base camp in unexplored science territory so someone smarter than I can mark ‘Here be Dragons’ a bit further out on the map, I could live with that - .
Jonnan