Why Is There No New "Einstein"?
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Why Is There No New "Einstein"?
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Re: Why Is There No New "Einstein"?
#2This is a very interesting question, but unfortunately in this case the author's answer is just the standard scientist's whine: "There's not enough funding for my kind of research".
Better possible answers include:
a) The time isn't right for the emergence of another Einstein just now
b) There are several around, we're just not paying attention
c) Einstein was really more of a media phenomenon than a physicist, and he wasn't really any more of a genius than several of his contemporaries, and several of ours.
d) There are so many more physicists nowadays than there were a hundred years ago that it's harder for one to stand so far above the others
e) Physics is almost over -- there's still things still left to discover, but no surprises on the scale of relativity or quantum mechanics left.
I'm not actually arguing for any of these possibilities right now, just saying that they are possibilities more interesting than Lee Smolin's "can has more money?" article.
Re: Why Is There No New "Einstein"?
#3It's a "scribd.com" link, but it looks like now it's smart enough to not bother with the wonky Flash plugin for Mac users, and just send us to the PDF. Yay!
Re: Why Is There No New "Einstein"?
#4Scene from the Big Bang Theory:
PENNY What's new in physics?
LEONARD Really nothing, except for string theory. But only then I can say, "My theory has certain mathematical consistencies"
Re: Why Is There No New "Einstein"?
#5The simple truth is that great scientist are simply a a rare event. How many scientists with the capacity of Einstein have there been? Newton, maybe Aristotle and Archimedes. That's four in the last two thousand years.
The capacity of scientists (genius, output or however you define it) most probably follows a powerlaw with a lot of mediocre scientists, a few outstanding (Louis Pasteur, Henry Cavendish, Louis Maxwell) and only one true genius for every two centuries. Since we had a genius that broke through in 1905 we will statistically have to wait for quite a while for the next one.
Re: Why Is There No New "Einstein"?
#6It's a "scribd.com" link, but it looks like now it's smart enough to not bother with the wonky Flash plugin for Mac users, and just send us to the PDF. Yay!
I don't think so; I got a PDF as well in Opera and Firefox on Ubuntu.
Re: Why Is There No New "Einstein"?
#7Well, when you compare the free, male, non-laboring population of Ancient Athens with the entire educated population of the world today, you have to wonder where all the Socrateses, Platos, Aristotles, Aristophaneses, etc, etc, etc, are hiding. Using the roughest possible statistics, every mid-sized town should have a few.
Re: Why Is There No New "Einstein"?
#8Well, when you compare the free, male, non-laboring population of Ancient Athens with the entire educated population of the world today, you have to wonder where all the Socrateses, Platos, Aristotles, Aristophaneses, etc, etc, etc, are hiding. Using the roughest possible statistics, every mid-sized town should have a few.
When you compare the educational prerequisites needed to discover something new nowadays and the educational prerequisites needed in Ancient Athens, you have your answer.
Most reasonably bright high-school kids can understand Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, etc. A few can even rederive their findings; there were a couple times when I was growing up when I had this great insight, only to find out that it had been discovered by a dead Greek guy 2000 years ago. But unfortunately, discovering the same stuff that the ancient Greeks discovered doesn't count as noteworthy anymore. The bar's been raised a little higher.
Same goes for most fields. Lots of college CS students can implement a Lisp interpreter now; it was a big deal when McCarthy did it in 1960. When Tchaikovsky wrote his violin concerto, he gave it to the best concert violinist of his day, who took one look at it and replied "This is unplayable." Now it's standard repertoire for dedicated high-schoolers.
Re: Why Is There No New "Einstein"?
#9It's a "scribd.com" link, but it looks like now it's smart enough to not bother with the wonky Flash plugin for Mac users, and just send us to the PDF. Yay!
It's a scribd.com link that redirects you to a PDF on everythingimportant.org.
Re: Why Is There No New "Einstein"?
#10The simple truth is that great scientist are simply a a rare event. How many scientists with the capacity of Einstein have there been? Newton, maybe Aristotle and Archimedes. That's four in the last two thousand years. The capacity of scientists (genius, output or however you define it) most probably follows a powerlaw with a lot of mediocre scientists, a few outstanding (Louis Pasteur, Henry Cavendish, Louis Maxwell…
There are way more people around now than there were then—the number of people alive today is comparable to the number of people who have died in the last millennium.