“Lehrer wants more funding to be directed to younger scientists, but he may be bumping against a more fundamental force than gerontocratic funding bodies. As the economist Benjamin Jones has discovered, scientists are having to specialise more and study for longer, because the frontiers of knowledge are now much further advanced than they were in Einstein’s day.”
It must be open to question whether we really know more than our ancestors. Considered just at the personal level is it plausible any one modern human can ‘know’ more than any individual from the past? What about all the things which they – rightly or wrongly – ‘knew’ to be the case but of which we are totally ignorant, or which have now been relegated to the province of the secluded scholar examining dusty tomes.
The traveller of today needs to know how to read an airline schedule or a motorway map, or how to switch on the sat nav; they do not need to know how to navigate on water.
Years ago I heard someone say that the reason why small children could set a video recorder but their grandparents could not was that a small child just pushes buttons until something happens – grandparents try to understand the instruction manual. ‘Push buttons until something happens’ is, I have found, an invaluable tip in these days of ever-evolving computer technologies – though the need to understand the instructions is the main reason that I do not want to take on the role of being my own home-IT manager.
This idea that it takes longer for a scientist to reach the stage of knowing enough to be able to make new findings has worried me for some time – I think it is one of those beliefs which contributes to the relative unpopularity of science at school. As one young woman said, in any other class I feel I can make a contribution of my own, but in science only the teacher knows, you just have to listen.
Even in my day – I actually set out to do physics A level, thinking that it must surely start to get interesting now. I dropped out by early November.
Part of the problem is that, as Collingwood argued, you cannot understand the answer unless you understand the question that scientists were setting out to answer. Yes, Boyles Law may stand the test of time & be capable of universal application, but why was the question so important then, & why did his experiments take the form that they did?
Is there any good reason why we cannot start children with Einstein, bringing in the earlier history as & when needed, or even relegating it to a separate part of the curriculum?
At the very least we should, through media such as animations, compress the file of scientific knowledge into forms that allow the principles to be quickly assimilated, leaving students to practice the true experimental method by testing their own (mini) hypotheses.
The Whiggish theory of scientific progress – of the inevitability of its particular path towards Theories of Everything – cannot be maintained forever. This approach must be ultimately self-defeating – assuming that there continues to be a limit to the length of the human lifespan, the day will come when that simply isn’t long enough to get to the end of what is known & the rest will be permanently & forever in the realm of the unknowable unknown.
The traveller of today needs to know how to read an airline schedule or a motorway map, or how to switch on the sat nav; they do not need to know how to navigate on water.
Years ago I heard someone say that the reason why small children could set a video recorder but their grandparents could not was that a small child just pushes buttons until something happens – grandparents try to understand the instruction manual. ‘Push buttons until something happens’ is, I have found, an invaluable tip in these days of ever-evolving computer technologies – though the need to understand the instructions is the main reason that I do not want to take on the role of being my own home-IT manager.
This idea that it takes longer for a scientist to reach the stage of knowing enough to be able to make new findings has worried me for some time – I think it is one of those beliefs which contributes to the relative unpopularity of science at school. As one young woman said, in any other class I feel I can make a contribution of my own, but in science only the teacher knows, you just have to listen.
Even in my day – I actually set out to do physics A level, thinking that it must surely start to get interesting now. I dropped out by early November.
Part of the problem is that, as Collingwood argued, you cannot understand the answer unless you understand the question that scientists were setting out to answer. Yes, Boyles Law may stand the test of time & be capable of universal application, but why was the question so important then, & why did his experiments take the form that they did?
Is there any good reason why we cannot start children with Einstein, bringing in the earlier history as & when needed, or even relegating it to a separate part of the curriculum?
At the very least we should, through media such as animations, compress the file of scientific knowledge into forms that allow the principles to be quickly assimilated, leaving students to practice the true experimental method by testing their own (mini) hypotheses.
The Whiggish theory of scientific progress – of the inevitability of its particular path towards Theories of Everything – cannot be maintained forever. This approach must be ultimately self-defeating – assuming that there continues to be a limit to the length of the human lifespan, the day will come when that simply isn’t long enough to get to the end of what is known & the rest will be permanently & forever in the realm of the unknowable unknown.
