surely it also makes sense that civilization is wealthier and has more capacity than ever for people to spend their lives pursuing knowledge, and that the opportunity to do so is available to more people (women, for instance.)
I am not sure that this is true.
Certainly, women can pursue knowledge. Or can they? Can men? Can anyone? I have my doubts. You have, I don’t doubt, heard the almost-stereotypical complaints about the tenured professor’s academic activity being devoted—if not entirely, then far too close to it—to such things as grant-writing, intradepartmental politicking, and other nonsense. It seems fairly clear to me that on average, the “scientist” of today does far less of anything that can (without diluting the word into unrecognizability) be called “science”. It may very well be much less. If one attempts to “pursue knowledge” today, there are many fields in which one ends up actually pursuing something more like “a career loosely associated with the pursuit of knowledge”.
The last point about how PhDs don’t necessarily do scientific thought makes sense. Shall I say “formal scientific thought” instead? We’re on LessWrong and may as well hold “real scientific thought” to a high standard, but if you want to conclude from this “we have most of all the people who are supposed to be scientists with us now and they’re not doing anything”, well, there’s something real to that too.
I confess that I don’t quite follow your train of thought, here (to the point that I can’t really tell whether you’re agreeing with me, or disagreeing, or what). Could you clarify?
My second point in the grandparent was, in fact, about Ph.D.s specifically. Once again, consider the case of my mother: she’s a teacher, an administrator, a curriculum designer, etc. My mother is not doing scientific thought. She’s not trying to do scientific thought. She had no plans to do any scientific thought, and no one else expected her to be doing any scientific thought, either (neither unofficially nor officially). My mother got her doctorate because, in her line of work, people with a doctorate earn more money than people without a doctorate. And, indeed, as a result of getting her doctorate, she began to earn more money. Everything is going according to plan. It’s just that said plan did not, and does not, involve “scientific thought” in any way.
You have, I don’t doubt, heard the almost-stereotypical complaints about the tenured professor’s academic activity being devoted—if not entirely, then far too close to it—to such things as grant-writing, intradepartmental politicking, and other nonsense.
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.
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.
Let’s assume that this is true, and the majority of ‘scientific’ thought is happening now. Given the observed rate of scientific progress, what explanation should we consider?
1) Today’s problems really are that much harder than old problems and/or no really, we’re making great progress! I kid.
2) Scientific thought today is so terrible that it doesn’t produce much scientific progress.
3) What we’re calling scientific thought never was what produced scientific progress.
4) Scientific thought today isn’t aimed at producing scientific progress, so it doesn’t.
What’s wrong with (1) being a valid explanation? The geniuses of the 17th and 18th centuries, like Gauss and Newton, did work that today is expected of moderately bright high-schoolers. Decartes’ geometry can be understood by middle-schoolers. Even the science of the 19th century, like work of Maxwell and Rutherford is considered to be pretty much undergraduate level today.
Is it really that implausible to you that the low-hanging fruit is gone?
I think you are drastically overestimating how common it is for even “moderately bright high-schoolers” to understand the material even half so well as Gauss or Newton did, rather than merely learning techniques (which techniques, by the way, were developed over the course of considerable time, so the math students of today are taking advantage of the work of many before them…).
I think there is about a three orders of magnitude difference between the difficulties of “inventing calculus where there was none before” and “learning calculus from a textbook explanation carefully laid out in the optimal order, with each component polished over the centuries to the easiest possible explanation, with all the barriers to understanding carefully paved over to construct the smoothest explanatory trajectory possible”.
(Yes, “three orders of magnitude” is an actual attempt to estimate something, insofar as that is at all meaningful for an unquantified gut instinct; it’s not just something I said for rhetoric effect.)
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”?
“Almost entirely” is very different from “somewhat.” Whether or not it’s self-evident that most “science” PhDs don’t do science, there’s plenty of finite evidence of problems, like Saul Perlmutter’s claim that he couldn’t do the work that won him his Nobel today. Perhaps there’s not an uniform decline, but there’s enough evidence that the meaning of the relevant metric is not consistently reliable to make it pretty sketchy to use PhD as a proxy for doing meaningful scientific work.
Certainly, women can pursue knowledge. Or can they? Can men? Can anyone?
I don’t know what you mean by this and suspect it’s beyond the scope of this piece.
It seems fairly clear to me that on average, the “scientist” of today does far less of anything that can (without diluting the word into unrecognizability) be called “science”. It may very well be much less.
Seems possible. I don’t know what the day-to-day process of past scientists was like. I wonder if something like improvements to statistics, the scientific method, etc., means that modern scientists get more learned per “time spent science” than in the past—I don’t know. This may also be outweighed by how many more scientists now than there were then.
The last point about how PhDs don’t necessarily do scientific thought makes sense. Shall I say “formal scientific thought” instead? We’re on LessWrong and may as well hold “real scientific thought” to a high standard, but if you want to conclude from this “we have most of all the people who are supposed to be scientists with us now and they’re not doing anything”, well, there’s something real to that too.
What I meant by this is that perhaps the thing I’m more directly grasping at here is “amount of time people have spent trying to do science”, with much less certainty around “how much science gets done.” If people are spending much more time trying to do science now than they ever have in the past, and less is getting done (I’m not sure if I buy this), that’s a problem, or maybe just indicative of something.
Once again, consider the case of my mother: she’s a teacher, an administrator, a curriculum designer, etc. My mother is not doing scientific thought. She’s not trying to do scientific thought.
Sure. I suppose I’m using PhDs as something of a proxy here, for “people who have spent a long time pushing on the edges of a scientific field”. Think of STEM PhDs alone if you prefe. (Though note that someone in your mother’s field could be doing science—if you say she’s not, I believe you, but limiting it to just classic STEM is also only a proxy.)
On the “who can pursue knowledge” question, it seems to me like Said’s actually saying two very different things:
Historically a large number of people likely inclined towards pursuing scientific knowledge didn’t have access to formal credentials. But this doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t do science!
The credentialing and career system in science impedes people from pursuing scientific knowledge.
These both seem like serious critiques of the proxy you’re using, similar to using “licensed therapist” as a proxy for “attentive sympathetic listener” or “lawyer” as a proxy for “works to resolve conflicts through systematic, formal reasoning.”
Certainly, women can pursue knowledge. Or can they? Can men? Can anyone?
I don’t know what you mean by this and suspect it’s beyond the scope of this piece.
What I meant by it is just what I wrote in the rest of that paragraph, not some additional mysterious philosophical question.
This may also be outweighed by how many more scientists now than there were then.
Indeed, it may be, but then again it may not be; and if it is, then by how much? These are the important questions.
(Though note that someone in your mother’s field could be doing science—if you say she’s not, I believe you, but limiting it to just classic STEM is also only a proxy.)
Let me emphasize once again that the fact that my mother isn’t doing science is not some fluke, aberration, regrettable failing of the officially intended operation of the system, etc. Literally no one had any intention or expectation that my mother would be doing any science. That’s not why she got her doctorate, and no one within the system thinks or expects otherwise, or thinks that this is somehow a problem.
Yes, someone else “in her field” (broadly speaking) could be doing science, and some people are. That changes nothing. I never said “no one with a Ph.D. in Education is doing science”.
The point is that the identification between “people with Ph.D.s” and “people doing / trying to do / supposed to be doing science”, which you seem to be assuming, simply does not exist—not even ideally, not even in terms of “intent” of the system. Maybe it did once, but not anymore.
I suppose I’m using PhDs as something of a proxy here, for “people who have spent a long time pushing on the edges of a scientific field”. Think of STEM PhDs alone if you prefe.
Yes, the question of “how many people are there today, who have spent a long time pushing on the edges of a scientific field” is an interesting and important one. But I think that even “STEM Ph.D.s” is a poor proxy for this. (I haven’t the time right now, but I may elaborate later on why that’s the case.)
I am not sure that this is true.
Certainly, women can pursue knowledge. Or can they? Can men? Can anyone? I have my doubts. You have, I don’t doubt, heard the almost-stereotypical complaints about the tenured professor’s academic activity being devoted—if not entirely, then far too close to it—to such things as grant-writing, intradepartmental politicking, and other nonsense. It seems fairly clear to me that on average, the “scientist” of today does far less of anything that can (without diluting the word into unrecognizability) be called “science”. It may very well be much less. If one attempts to “pursue knowledge” today, there are many fields in which one ends up actually pursuing something more like “a career loosely associated with the pursuit of knowledge”.
I confess that I don’t quite follow your train of thought, here (to the point that I can’t really tell whether you’re agreeing with me, or disagreeing, or what). Could you clarify?
My second point in the grandparent was, in fact, about Ph.D.s specifically. Once again, consider the case of my mother: she’s a teacher, an administrator, a curriculum designer, etc. My mother is not doing scientific thought. She’s not trying to do scientific thought. She had no plans to do any scientific thought, and no one else expected her to be doing any scientific thought, either (neither unofficially nor officially). My mother got her doctorate because, in her line of work, people with a doctorate earn more money than people without a doctorate. And, indeed, as a result of getting her doctorate, she began to earn more money. Everything is going according to plan. It’s just that said plan did not, and does not, involve “scientific thought” in any way.
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.
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.
Let’s assume that this is true, and the majority of ‘scientific’ thought is happening now. Given the observed rate of scientific progress, what explanation should we consider?
1) Today’s problems really are that much harder than old problems and/or no really, we’re making great progress! I kid.
2) Scientific thought today is so terrible that it doesn’t produce much scientific progress.
3) What we’re calling scientific thought never was what produced scientific progress.
4) Scientific thought today isn’t aimed at producing scientific progress, so it doesn’t.
What’s wrong with (1) being a valid explanation? The geniuses of the 17th and 18th centuries, like Gauss and Newton, did work that today is expected of moderately bright high-schoolers. Decartes’ geometry can be understood by middle-schoolers. Even the science of the 19th century, like work of Maxwell and Rutherford is considered to be pretty much undergraduate level today.
Is it really that implausible to you that the low-hanging fruit is gone?
I think you are drastically overestimating how common it is for even “moderately bright high-schoolers” to understand the material even half so well as Gauss or Newton did, rather than merely learning techniques (which techniques, by the way, were developed over the course of considerable time, so the math students of today are taking advantage of the work of many before them…).
I think there is about a three orders of magnitude difference between the difficulties of “inventing calculus where there was none before” and “learning calculus from a textbook explanation carefully laid out in the optimal order, with each component polished over the centuries to the easiest possible explanation, with all the barriers to understanding carefully paved over to construct the smoothest explanatory trajectory possible”.
(Yes, “three orders of magnitude” is an actual attempt to estimate something, insofar as that is at all meaningful for an unquantified gut instinct; it’s not just something I said for rhetoric effect.)
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”?
“Almost entirely” is very different from “somewhat.” Whether or not it’s self-evident that most “science” PhDs don’t do science, there’s plenty of finite evidence of problems, like Saul Perlmutter’s claim that he couldn’t do the work that won him his Nobel today. Perhaps there’s not an uniform decline, but there’s enough evidence that the meaning of the relevant metric is not consistently reliable to make it pretty sketchy to use PhD as a proxy for doing meaningful scientific work.
I don’t know what you mean by this and suspect it’s beyond the scope of this piece.
Seems possible. I don’t know what the day-to-day process of past scientists was like. I wonder if something like improvements to statistics, the scientific method, etc., means that modern scientists get more learned per “time spent science” than in the past—I don’t know. This may also be outweighed by how many more scientists now than there were then.
What I meant by this is that perhaps the thing I’m more directly grasping at here is “amount of time people have spent trying to do science”, with much less certainty around “how much science gets done.” If people are spending much more time trying to do science now than they ever have in the past, and less is getting done (I’m not sure if I buy this), that’s a problem, or maybe just indicative of something.
Sure. I suppose I’m using PhDs as something of a proxy here, for “people who have spent a long time pushing on the edges of a scientific field”. Think of STEM PhDs alone if you prefe. (Though note that someone in your mother’s field could be doing science—if you say she’s not, I believe you, but limiting it to just classic STEM is also only a proxy.)
On the “who can pursue knowledge” question, it seems to me like Said’s actually saying two very different things:
Historically a large number of people likely inclined towards pursuing scientific knowledge didn’t have access to formal credentials. But this doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t do science!
The credentialing and career system in science impedes people from pursuing scientific knowledge.
These both seem like serious critiques of the proxy you’re using, similar to using “licensed therapist” as a proxy for “attentive sympathetic listener” or “lawyer” as a proxy for “works to resolve conflicts through systematic, formal reasoning.”
What I meant by it is just what I wrote in the rest of that paragraph, not some additional mysterious philosophical question.
Indeed, it may be, but then again it may not be; and if it is, then by how much? These are the important questions.
Let me emphasize once again that the fact that my mother isn’t doing science is not some fluke, aberration, regrettable failing of the officially intended operation of the system, etc. Literally no one had any intention or expectation that my mother would be doing any science. That’s not why she got her doctorate, and no one within the system thinks or expects otherwise, or thinks that this is somehow a problem.
Yes, someone else “in her field” (broadly speaking) could be doing science, and some people are. That changes nothing. I never said “no one with a Ph.D. in Education is doing science”.
The point is that the identification between “people with Ph.D.s” and “people doing / trying to do / supposed to be doing science”, which you seem to be assuming, simply does not exist—not even ideally, not even in terms of “intent” of the system. Maybe it did once, but not anymore.
Yes, the question of “how many people are there today, who have spent a long time pushing on the edges of a scientific field” is an interesting and important one. But I think that even “STEM Ph.D.s” is a poor proxy for this. (I haven’t the time right now, but I may elaborate later on why that’s the case.)