People who like clubbing - Page 13

That's cool- plenty of scientists and historians would disagree too. It is absurd to say that science in the 50s was less "theoretically inclined" than it is now based on the mere fact that Hodgkin and Huxley made important discoveries. All it indicates is that you have no understanding or appreciation for modern research

Cite some sources that argue/prove "science in the 50s was more 'theoretically inclined'" if it's not just your personal opinion

Astrophysics: Stellar nucleosynthesis finally understood with seminal work from Hoyle in 1954.

Computing: First electronic computers built. Foundations of computer programming developed as well as various other associated technology even down to fibre optic cables.

Genetics: Double-helix model of DNA and basic principles of genetics.

Cosmology: Field didn't really take off until after Einstein's death, but Golden Age of general relativity began in late 50s with Finkelstein discovering that black holes have event horizons.

I challenge you to name any theoretical breakthroughs in these fields from the last two decades that comes close to these achievements. (And please...don't say "the Human Genome Project".)

You haven't given a single example of a theoretical achievement from the last two decades that even potentially could come close to the literally dozens that I could list from the 50s. See my last post for just the tip of the ice-berg. I haven't even mentioned Chomsky's theory of universal grammar, the work of Konrad Lorenz is ethology, and many, many other things which have been followed almost religiously ever since.

That's neat. Surely you can cite several sources arguing that "science in the 50s was more 'theoretically inclined'", or was it just your personal opinion stemming from the fact that certain discoveries and advances were made in the 50s? What are you even asking me to do? To come up with a recent scientific advance that I believe is subjectively comparable to a scientific advance from the 50s? Not sure how to compare apples with oranges. How about instead you simply point me in the direction of some strong sources that argue for science being "less theoretically inclined" i.e. shittier now than it was in the 50s

So basically all you have to add to this conversation is "apples and oranges". Cute, but something I already considered and it's an utterly moronic point to make. By that logic you can't compare Saudi Arabia's scientific output with that of the United States. Because that would be a value judgement. Anybody who doesn't have an agenda to push on this subject can clearly see that a disparity can become so glaring that it's impossible to resist a value judgement. That's the disparity I was trying to highlight by pointing to groundbreaking achievements in fundamental science compared with faltering Western leadership and a couple of decades so stagnant in pure science that you can't even point to a single promising development. (Not an if, a could or a maybe, but a promising development. And no, it doesn't take decades for them to bear fruit, or at least it didn't in the 50s.)

None of this was ever needed to establish my original point, which was merely that "Their achievements were awesome -- show them some fucking respect." But do continue with your ignorant and obviously false agenda that the 50s were behind us in every variable.

You may want to brush up on current research, especially neuroscience, if you think it's stagnated "in the West" over recent decades. The fact that the progress today is far more specialized in scope and that there aren't more foundational breakthroughs (e.g. the general action potential mechanism of neuronal signaling) does not indicate it's "less theoretically inclined". It indicates that progress is far enough along that a layperson like you has no capacity to understand or appreciate it for being every bit as scientifically sound and rigorous as work done in the 50s. Brainbow? Cre-lox recombination? Gene gun? Transgenesis? Discovery of neurogenesis @ human adult brain? Vastly improved understanding of peripheral vs. central nervous system regenerative capacity? Neuro-motor prosthesis dependent on brain computer interface? These sorts of advances we see today are just as important as broader advances in the 50s. Today there isn't as much need to fill in gaps of broad understanding vs. the 50s. The more we know on a broad scale (i.e. what we know stemming from early ground work such as the things you list), the more we understand the need to delve further into the details (i.e. much of the work being done today). You mention that DNA's structure was solved in the 50s -- great, that's an example of early foundational work in genetics. Now today we're doing things with DNA that far surpass that groundwork and vastly expand the boundaries of our genetics understanding. That groundwork is no less or more impressive than current work stemming from it.

Your argument is that "science in the 50s was more theoretically inclined than science today". All that sounds like is a weak thesis statement for a paper from some history of science college course. As I said before, if you know of any authoritative source that argues your point, feel free to post it. As it stands you're just blabbing on about foundational scientific advances being better/more "theoretically inclined" than the more specialized research dominating today's fields. In fact you even had the audacity to say that current neuroscience work is nothing more than "looking at MRI images and reporting them" -- wrong!

I'm not really sure what your point is, to be honest. Yes, there were important discoveries in the 1950's...and the 60's/70's/80's/90's/00's, as well as pre-1950's (QM, Relativity, etc.)
First off: I'm going to name a mix of theoretical and practical breakthroughs, since that's what you did (building electronic computers etc.). Since our technology is very sophisticated these days, it's usually possible to adapt theoretical discoveries to practical ones much more quickly than we could in the past.

(Astro)physics: understanding galaxy formation, that the universe is accelerating, in depth studying of cosmic background radiation to make progress in understanding the shape of spacetime, discovery of extra-solar planets, experimental evidence for the Big Bang/actually understanding what the fuck it was, bose-einstein condensate synthesis


cosmology: cosmic inflationary theory (pretty much the standard nowadays) was formulated in the early 80s and extensively supported by various experiments since then; discovery of the Higgs Boson recently is a pretty huge step forward in confirming our understand of the Standard Model; quark model was post-1950's, etc.

Genetics/Bio/Medicine: DNA sequencing, forensic DNA analysis, DNA profiling in general, using DNA to store information, daily HIV pill (increasing life expectancy dramatically and greatly reduces chance of contracting the virus) gene therapy, HRT, first successful cloning experiments, stem cells, creation of synthetic genomes, and yes, the human genome project (no idea why you think this is unimportant, although it's not as hyped as people have made it seem).

Computing: quantum computing, optical chips, the internet, Shor's algorithm, massive advances in cryptography.

Mathematics: proofs of the Poincare Conjecture & Fermat's Last Theorem (fucking massive achievement considering how long it was unsolved).

Miscellany: evidence based medical literature wasn't really the norm until the early 90's, and psychiatry/psychology were really, really nebulous before even 20 years ago. I'd actually say that psychiatry/psychology is one of the biggest achievements of the modern era. We went from really weird, fantastical things like psychoanalysis to very grounded, workable ways of treating mental disorders (we've also smoothed out the definition of that a hell of a lot).


These are just some of the many, many discoveries that have occurred since the 1950's. But don't get me wrong: there was some gigantic discoveries in the 50's. The point here is that there wasn't some systematic decreasing in scientific creativity like you're asserting, but rather than after a revolution, you have to fill in the details. What's next? Are we going to say Riemann's and Lebesgue's integrals didn't matter much because Lebiniz and Newton were the ones who invented calculus?

You're making a really huge error in only considering sweeping theories as legitimate theoretical breakthroughs. Aside from the fact that few of the most important physics-related revolutions occurred in the 1950's (shit like relativity happened earlier, same with Planck's work and Lorentz's) this line of reasoning your using is applicable to pretty much any generation. I mean, obviously the first person to come up with a theoretical computer program (Lovelace) was pioneering something that had never even been stated properly before, but that doesn't mean that von Neumann's or Turing's contributions to computer science were less creative or unimportant.

The truth of the matter is that modern science is very much a matter of very narrow, experiment-driven work. The reason we aren't reinventing Relativity every decade isn't because we're not creative, but because Relativity appears to be correct in concept. If someone already knows the answer to a question, obviously we're not going to come up with an even more groundbreaking answer to that same question, because the first answer was already pretty much correct. In addition, science progresses so much faster in the modern era, due to increased efficiency permitted by technology, and the collaborative abilities provided by the internet/feasible travel.

I am in no way trying to say that any period in the past century was "more creative" with respect to science in any systematic way, but I'm definitely saying that, as knowledge grows, the things we discover have to be subtler and more nuanced. You've continued to assert that modern science is "stagnant," but you haven't provided a single reason for this to be the case, given that, by pretty much every metric, accessibility to scientific literature has improved, education has become more accessible, and universities are larger. So if science is really as stagnant as you say it is (and I disagree, obviously) then you have to provide a reason as to why that is.

If you seriously dispute my assertion that our knowledge of computing/astrophysics/genetics/cosmology/physics/math/medicine/whatever is not miles ahead of what it was in the 1950's, then I'm not sure what to tell you, other than that you have a very romanticized understanding of what scientific discovery looks like. You seem to think it's geniuses sitting in their studies and coming up with thought experiments from sheer creative intuition. But it's not. Most of it is trying to better understand the problem so that we can actually attempt to formulate a solution. If anything, you should be lamenting that the Scientific Revolution was over a century ago, since you seem to think that if there aren't revolutions every couple of years, things are "stagnant."

There is no scientific theoretical breakthrough you can name that isn't hugely dependent on someone from a previous era. That's the point. It's not about measuring our dicks against those of previous generations; it's about adding to our body of knowledge, training young minds to think critically, providing opportunities for growth, and making that knowledge accessible.