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.
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.