Robert Crampton, in The Times magazine: We were the sensitive arty types, we were so cool, so creative … It was obvious, it was axiomatic that our preoccupations were superior … I have gradually come to believe it was the chemists & geographers, the physicists & engineers, the medics & mathematicians who were getting the really good stuff
The tragedy in this is the nature of modern scientific education which crushes the imagination. Instead of encouraging thoughts about Where do we go from here? the emphasis is all on How did we get here? The standing on the shoulders of giants syndrome means that the young are expected, respectfully, to struggle to understand the world their predecessors lived in, to understand how they discovered the secrets of electricity, internet or aeroplanes. Only when they have learned all that are they fit for the job of exploring new frontiers
It also means that the only publishable science is that approved by the process of peer review. Peers, in this context, sometimes just means the intellectual equivalents of the masters of the game of Rugby Union as anathematised by Will Carling
Related posts: Creativity Irish jokes & schizophrenia
