In reality, however, scientific progress seems to be accelerating. Of course, it’s hard to measure, but I’ve seen claims that the portion of the 21st century that has passed has already brought more scientific discoveries than all of the 20th century, let alone the ones before, and these claims don’t seem implausible to me.
There’s a recent paper on the topic “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?” According to data analyzed there rate of scientific discoveries in existing fields (e.g crop yields increase, Moore’s law, etc.) remains close to constant while number of researchers constantly increases.
This might have something to do with the fact that the problems are getting harder now that the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Every additional year to life expectancy is harder than the one before. Every cycle of Moore’s law is harder because we’re starting to deal with sizes comparable to molecules.
There’s a recent paper on the topic “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?” According to data analyzed there rate of scientific discoveries in existing fields (e.g crop yields increase, Moore’s law, etc.) remains close to constant while number of researchers constantly increases.
Interesting.
This might have something to do with the fact that the problems are getting harder now that the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Every additional year to life expectancy is harder than the one before. Every cycle of Moore’s law is harder because we’re starting to deal with sizes comparable to molecules.
I admit that this makes my point weaker.