Hmm yea I see your point. I guess what I was saying is that there are certain thought patterns and styles of cognition which may be more likely to stumble on the kind of ideas or do the kind of work that can potentially lead to paradigm shifts. Whether or not we are less able to think in this way now is definitely an open question but I think one we should worry about.
Agreed that it matters a lot to have people working on new paradigms. I guess the reason I’m absolutely not worried about lacking people like that in today’s scientific climate is that I don’t expect scientific education can get that out of someone. From my experience, there’s a small category of science students who care a lot about asking weird questions and questioning everything, and they almost never end up doing normal science.
Hmm yea I see your point. I guess what I was saying is that there are certain thought patterns and styles of cognition which may be more likely to stumble on the kind of ideas or do the kind of work that can potentially lead to paradigm shifts. Whether or not we are less able to think in this way now is definitely an open question but I think one we should worry about.
Agreed that it matters a lot to have people working on new paradigms. I guess the reason I’m absolutely not worried about lacking people like that in today’s scientific climate is that I don’t expect scientific education can get that out of someone. From my experience, there’s a small category of science students who care a lot about asking weird questions and questioning everything, and they almost never end up doing normal science.