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Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

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Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#51

Post by jamesrcole »

jmmcd wrote: post #48
jamesrcole wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We need big thinkers > We need some, but there aren't anywhere near enough big-thinking jobs Ok. Perhaps we also need jobs for them? [EDIT: what I mean is, perhaps it is in society's interest to divert some resources to creating more jobs for such people?] And perhaps the research itself, that these big thinkers do for their PhDs, has important value for society?

Diverting resources sounds good, but obviously should come first. The research itself could and should have value. But a PhD must go all the way to the bottom, in terms of detail. It's not a pop science book or a funding programme, which can delegate the details to someone else. Therefore, asking the PhD student to be a big thinker as well as taking care of the experimental details is just raising the bar -- it's not…

I think you're conflating "ordinary research" and "applied research". "Big thinking" is often pure research, and pure research is just as valid a topic for a PhD as applied research is. There's not a lot of other opportunities to spend a significant amount of time working on the one thing.

> Maybe the big thinking should be done -- as it is currently -- by people who have already demonstrated that they can do all that very well.

I completely dispute this. I would bet that historically, the majority of "big thinking" has been done by people who are not already well established.

In fact, I think there's a fallacy that "big thinking" somehow comes from accumulated experience. I would argue that "big thinking" is actually a different kind of thinking, one that requires you to have that kind of thinking rather than a wealth of experience.

[EDIT: there seems to be empirical evidence that having a wealth of experience tends to prevent people from coming up with (good) "big ideas". And since this is Hacker News, think about this in terms of technology and startups. Is it usually older people or younger people who tend to come up with the game-changing tech developments?]

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#52

Post by roymurdock »

mannykannot wrote: post #49
roymurdock wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a popular paradigm shift theory that posits that we tend to adopt frameworks that explain the world, then work incrementally within those frameworks until they cease to make as much sense/have as much explanatory power as they once did. Then someone (Newton, Darwin, Einstein) comes along and assembles a new framework based on new observations/theories that do a better job of explaining things. Eg the switch f…

There is an important truth here, but be aware that the popular history of science and technology over-emphasizes the 'lone genius' narrative (it is the 'lone' part that is exaggerated.)

Agreed, but that's the story we like to hear, so it's the one that gets repeated. That nobody lives and works in a vacuum is an implicit assumption.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#53

Post by maus42 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #2

Sure, let's "put back" something that was never there in the first place. Philosophiae Doctor is just the name of the degree. Where did it come from? Let's ask wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Philosophy ): > In most of Europe, all fields other than theology, law, and medicine were traditionally known as philosophy, and in Germany and elsewhere in Europe the basic faculty of (liberal) arts was know…

And 'science' as we know it today used to be called 'natural philosophy'.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#54

Post by jamesrcole »

lmm wrote: post #46
jamesrcole wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could Einstein have justified his course of research as an attempt to incrementally innovate on some existing work?

Sure. "I'm trying to figure out a more consistent way of applying the Lorentz contraction" or something on those lines.

What chances would a person claiming that have had for getting funding?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the incentives are strongly biased to what can be easily seen as a increment on what has been done before, and that this is biased against work that may draw on what has been done before but is presenting a fairly different view to what is currently accepted.

Could Darwin have presented his view as an incremental extension of some existing view? (I am aware there were existing theories of evolution, but there weren't any like Darwin's or Wallace's to be built upon).

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#55

Post by cryoshon »

Fede_V wrote: post #8
jmmcd wrote: post #7

> We need big thinkers We need some, but there aren't anywhere near enough big-thinking jobs for all these PhDs. > The success of science and technology will always lead to new ethical dilemmas. How do you spot them and try to work with society before they become problems? A better appreciation of ethics is likely to address what has become an epidemic of retractions in the scientific literature. All the recent retra…

Yeah, pretty much exactly this. In the abstract, I fully support teaching science PhDs more about Quine, Russell, Popper, Carnap - they are all great thinkers who had very intelligent ideas. In practice, PhDs at top tier institutions are far too concerned with the day to day rat race that the history of ideas is not likely to be a serious priority. As long as the competition for stable positions will remain so fierce…

The last academic shop I was at had an Eritrean biostatistician around who was the only actual philosopher of science in the entire troupe. He understood the different perspectives of epistemology as well as statistical analysis, and was a tremendous asset in planning new studies for the most high impact data... unfortunately, to many of the postdocs and PIs, he was just an annoyance, because they refused to accept that their studies were poorly constructed and their data was less than rigorous.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#56

Post by Fylwind »

ThomPete wrote: post #26
mattmanser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the traditional natural sciences that's not been true for a few centuries now. Theoretical physicists aren't classified as philosophers for example, which fits your 'asking' criteria. Theoretical scientists ask, experimental test. It was still kind of true in the social sciences like psychology and sociology in the last century, but they've become more 'real', more rigorous and less influenced by philosophers, the…

It doesn't matter what they are classified as what matters is what they do. It's the difference between the disciplin of philosophy and the act of philosophizing. Without philosophizing there wouldn't be any big bang theory, or string theory etc. Philosophy is a slippery slope the same way that improvising in music is. It's value is not in the results but in the process.

Ideas and breakthroughs in physics don't usually just appear out of vacuum. More often, they occur through a series of mathematical analogies, heuristics, and trial and error. String theory, for example, was motivated by the fact that the equations that govern gluons resemble equations of a vibrating string.

There are a few folks who do care about things like multiverses and quantum foundations, which certainly overlap with philosophy a lot more, but it's not really something most physicists do.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#57

Post by cryoshon »

rquantz wrote: post #32
jmmcd wrote: post #7

> We need big thinkers We need some, but there aren't anywhere near enough big-thinking jobs for all these PhDs. > The success of science and technology will always lead to new ethical dilemmas. How do you spot them and try to work with society before they become problems? A better appreciation of ethics is likely to address what has become an epidemic of retractions in the scientific literature. All the recent retra…

> We need big thinkers We need some, but there aren't anywhere near enough big-thinking jobs for all these PhDs. Yeah, man, jobs! It's all about jobs! Jobs jobs jobs! Steve Jobs! Jobs jobs! How about this? The world needs big thinkers in ways other than their capacity as economic actors. Einstein worked at a patent office. The work he did there (for the patent office) was not his primary contribution to the world at…

Yeah, I think the author forgot that:

1. Being smart isn't a product, and most people won't consider it a skill

2. Thinking big isn't a product, and most people won't consider it a skill

3. Thinking big is usually reserved for top level people, of which there are less than five

You know what they call the big thinker who is looking for a job with his shiny new PhD? Unemployed.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#58

Post by Keyframe »

maus42 wrote: post #53
thaumasiotes wrote: post #2

Sure, let's "put back" something that was never there in the first place. Philosophiae Doctor is just the name of the degree. Where did it come from? Let's ask wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Philosophy ): > In most of Europe, all fields other than theology, law, and medicine were traditionally known as philosophy, and in Germany and elsewhere in Europe the basic faculty of (liberal) arts was know…

And 'science' as we know it today used to be called 'natural philosophy'.

OP asked wikipedia in the wrong place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_science#History

As one can remember from high school, natural science fields spawned from natural philosophy from 17th through 19th century. Culminating maybe with psychology in the early 20th century (end of 19th). No mystery there.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#59

Post by toufka »

dagw wrote: post #18
4ad wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a "real" study, but it appears to be true: https://youtu.be/Mpsc-BxAiHs?t=1537

It's a common view, but a number of studies seem to contradict of at least question this: http://openaccessweek.org/profiles/blogs/age-amp-science-do-... "A study in 2002 examined 50 Nobel prize winners from each of the three prizes for physics, chemistry and medicine. This study recorded the age of the scientists when they had done the work that was rewarded with the prize and found that the centre points for age we…

'On the ground' productivity, where the scientist is doing labwork ends before a scientist 'gets their name on papers'. That kind of work is different from the 'guiding the science' work. It's the boss who wins the Nobel Prize, not the student, though it's the student who is the 'productive' one in lab.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#60

Post by mannykannot »

jamesrcole wrote: post #54
lmm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. "I'm trying to figure out a more consistent way of applying the Lorentz contraction" or something on those lines.

What chances would a person claiming that have had for getting funding? I guess what I'm trying to say is that the incentives are strongly biased to what can be easily seen as a increment on what has been done before, and that this is biased against work that may draw on what has been done before but is presenting a fairly different view to what is currently accepted. Could Darwin have presented his view as an increm…

I think this is a good case for showing that the dichotomy is not particularly useful as the last word. Darwin was influenced by Malthus and Adam Smith, and also by Paley's watchmaker argument insofar as he sought to refute it, but his work was nothing short of revolutionary.

Tenure with reduced teaching responsibilities is the way big thinking gets funded these days.

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