Yes, but the gentlemen scholars of the 18th century couldn’t devote all of their time to the pursuit of science either. They had estates to run, social obligations to fulfill, duels to fight, and, as you so well put it, “other nonsense.” Is the tenured professor today doing more or less “science” per week than a gentleman scholar of the 18th century? I don’t know, but I’m not sure that it’s self evident that Lord Kelvin and Charles Darwin were doing more science per week than a tenured professor today.
This is partly a fair point and a good question, though it’s also partly unfair.
An 18th-century gentleman scholar might, indeed, have to devote time to running his estate. (Although “duels to fight” might be a stretch. How many duels did Charles Darwin or Lord Kelvin participate in?)
But then, a 21st-century tenured professor also has to devote time to any number of things outside work: hobbies, taking care of his family, housework, shopping, etc.
The problem, however, is that even of that time which our tenured professor allocates to “work”, much is wasted. Was this also true of the gentleman scholar?
Secondly, even after taking into consideration the possibility that gentlemen scholars did much more science per week than today’s tenured professors, I still think it’s plausible that much more science, in total, is getting done today than it was in the 18th Century. We have to remember how few early scientists were, and how difficult it was for them to communicate. Even if a modern tenured professor spends 90% less time doing science than a gentleman scholar, it’s still plausible to me that the majority of scientific thought is taking place right now.
Indeed, it is true that our overwhelming numerical advantage over the world of the past must result in today’s “total time doing science” far outweighing that of any past era.
The question, however, concerned the “majority of scientific thought”—and that (I contend) is a rather different matter.
To put it bluntly, many people in STEM fields are working on things that don’t, in any real sense, matter—artificial problems, non-problems, intellectual cul-de-sacs, that lead to nothing; they exist, and have people working on them, only due to the current (grant-based) model of science funding. No researcher who is being honest with himself (and has not totally lost such self-awareness) really thinks that there’s scientific value in such things, that they advance the frontiers of human knowledge and understanding of the universe. Computer science is full of this. So are various informatics-related fields. So is HCI.
Are the researchers who work on such things engaged in “scientific thought”?
This is partly a fair point and a good question, though it’s also partly unfair.
An 18th-century gentleman scholar might, indeed, have to devote time to running his estate. (Although “duels to fight” might be a stretch. How many duels did Charles Darwin or Lord Kelvin participate in?)
But then, a 21st-century tenured professor also has to devote time to any number of things outside work: hobbies, taking care of his family, housework, shopping, etc.
The problem, however, is that even of that time which our tenured professor allocates to “work”, much is wasted. Was this also true of the gentleman scholar?
Indeed, it is true that our overwhelming numerical advantage over the world of the past must result in today’s “total time doing science” far outweighing that of any past era.
The question, however, concerned the “majority of scientific thought”—and that (I contend) is a rather different matter.
To put it bluntly, many people in STEM fields are working on things that don’t, in any real sense, matter—artificial problems, non-problems, intellectual cul-de-sacs, that lead to nothing; they exist, and have people working on them, only due to the current (grant-based) model of science funding. No researcher who is being honest with himself (and has not totally lost such self-awareness) really thinks that there’s scientific value in such things, that they advance the frontiers of human knowledge and understanding of the universe. Computer science is full of this. So are various informatics-related fields. So is HCI.
Are the researchers who work on such things engaged in “scientific thought”?