If you’re a scientist, I’m wondering if you have to be.
I was just reading about the work of some Victorian scientists, and it struck me that, until the twentieth century, science was a doddle.
I mean, admittedly you still needed to be something special to have the insight of a Newton. But most of the key experiments up to the latter parts of the nineteenth century could be carried out by eleven-year-olds in their kitchen. At worst, they certainly wouldn’t stretch a secondary school science lab.
Similarly, where maths itself had already headed off into the stratosphere by Victorian times, until Maxwell came along, most teenagers could cope with what’s necessary.
Now, though, you’ve experiments that take the budget of a small country, or that require specialist equipment most of us don’t understand, or you work at a level of precision that’s outside the scope of the normal human being. Similarly, the maths has gone beyond anything we do, even at the top end of school.
Once this mental explosion was really only true of physics (hence Rutherford’s infamous remark), but these days it applies to all the sciences, as any non-biologist can testify when facing the sort of thing many Nature Networkers contribute.
So the question’s simple. Do you have to be cleverer to be a scientist now than you used to be? Is there any hope for us normal mortals, or are you working scientists all superhuman geniuses that make the rest of seem like Homer Simpsons? We have a right to know.
To quote Isaac Newton (or possibly paraphrase, as I do not have the source to hand): “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants|”
But he was just being nasty to the (anything but giant) Hooke. That’s a get-out Brian – like my comment on Newton it’s more about the insights than either the practical experiments or the mathematical expertise required…
The answer to your question is: certainly not! Of course there is a place and a need for geniuses and it is true that much of modern physics, which is now drilling down well below the sub-atomic level, requires experimental techniques that are bewilderingly complex. But the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of working scientists are “normal mortals” – and are still quite capable of doing excellent work!
The somewhat stereotypical notion that you have to be a genius to tackle science in the 21st Century is potentially toxic to young minds who might despair of having any chance to get stuck in. We need to emphasise that our business is certainly still open and accessible to bright, enquiring minds. Certainly it’s not for everyone, but I believe that a good measure of intelligence coupled with an inquisitive and skeptical disposition are the only prerequisites.
And I think you are quite wrong to portray pre-20th century science as a ‘doddle’. I suspect this is another textbook fallacy. Much of what we now understand about the workings of the world we just take for granted and have little appreciation of the conceptual leaps that were originally needed to get us there. Newton’s gravitational insights are a good example but one that has struck me in the past is the concept of “heat”. Nowdays we are so comfortable in the idea of heat being a form of energy that we cannot conceive of anything else. But this is a relatively modern idea. Lavoisier, in his seminal Chemistry textbook of the late 18th Century still listed heat as one of the ‘elements’ alongside hydrogen and nitrogen – and held to the view that is was a liquid substance (caloric). This is not to imply that Lavoisier was a fool — far from it — but only to emphasise the conceptual difficulties that he faced. Science has never been a doddle in my view – it has always intrigued and fascinated and demanded the attention of sharp, enquiring minds – and, thankfully, continues to do so!
Isn’t it ‘1% inspiration, 99% perspiration’? If it was easy, everybody would do it. I think the really talented ones are those that find it easy. I can only speak for myself – “Nah!”
Stephen – interesting points, but I still think, like Brian, you miss my original thesis.
What you talk about once more is insight. What I was talking about was the level of practical expertise required and the maths required.
At secondary school, in my school science club, I was quite capable of undertaking many of the classic experiments successfully. I couldn’t have done many contemporary ones. Ditto the maths.
I know these aren’t everything – you do need inspiration too. But what I’m suggesting is that it was easier to undertake Lee’s (or rather Edison’s) 99% perspiration in the old days. All kinds of amateurs managed to make scientific breakthroughs with a bit of dabbling. They wouldn’t have a hope today, because they couldn’t put the equipment together in their kitchen, and couldn’t do the maths on the back of a fag packet.
Brian – Let me be the first to confess that my initial comment was a flippant but obvious.
Mathematics can appear very complex but it is often suddenly obvious. I went through my undergraduate course not really understanding the concept of partial differential equations but when solving one became part of my PhD I suddenly “got it”.
My mathematical ability is still somewhat below that of many people but with the ubiquity of computing one can solve a lot of the maths required in science without needing to know it all. Many people carry out molecular dynamics simulations without need in to understand the underlying algorithms. The same is true for many engineers using finite element methods. Of course you still need the appropriate scientific insight to determine whether you are producing reasonable predictions and you must be aware of assumptions and sensitivities in the methods used.
At this point I should point out that the use of tools developed by others is universal. Almost everyone uses differential and integral calculus without understanding the logic of the pure maths that underlies it. Before Newton/Liebnitz calculus was not a tool available to anyone but now it is essential. People who used calculus after its discovery were not geniuses at the level of the discoverers but rather had been schooled in new methods.
I think a good analogy for scientific discovery is the inflating baloon with the volume representing what we know and the expanding surface representing current activity. With this ever expanding area of inquiry, individual scientists tend to become more focussed on a smaller fraction of science. Perhaps in the past it was possible to work across many fields and make a significant impact because the area of advancement was inherently smaller as it was built on a lesser foundation. A good example of an early polymath was Hooke, of whom you were so disparaging earlier. He was the first to observe the cell in a microscope and laid down one of the foundations of engineering in his eponymous law. Another is Young with optics, thermodynamics and egyptology in his CV. These days it is much more difficult to find someone who has made significant impact across diverse fields and this would be the greatest difference I would identify between scientists in the past and those active today.
No.
On the other hand …
No, I think its more a question of specialisation. I would have said that in the 19th century a resaonably bright person could cover the majority of the scientific endeavour with some degree of expertise. These days we have just become more and more specialised in a little tiny narrow area.
To put it another way, 100 years ago you built your own instruments and the parts they were made from. 50 years ago you probably had a workshop to do the actual machining and shaping, and these days the majority of biologists when asked how instrument X works will start waving their hands vigorously.
Even amongst my aquaintances of the ‘build a device to hook your measurement up to a Squid’ school of physics I don’t think any of them have actually built a squid (which stands for super conducting quantum interference device or ‘very sensitive measuring thingy – not a subtle reference to New Zealand zoologists).
Henry – you keep telling us you’re not a scientist, so you don’t need to apply.
The rest of you – still not convinced, I’m afraid.
Yes.
Brian C. – I think I understand what you’re saying but I don’t believe that I entirely missed the point (I was firing with a large bore blunderbuss after all…!). Your arguments are strongest perhaps in the realm of physics which has certainly gone in some very non-intuitive directions in the last 100 years and these days will demand sophisticated mathematical skills. But I meet physicists most days of the week (I used to be one myself) and most seem ‘normal’ to me.
In other areas (I have migrated to the life sciences), although maths is becoming more and more important (something I am keen to push onto the UG curriculum), it is much less of a pre-requisite for a productive life at the bench. So to address your core question “Do you have to be cleverer to be a scientist now than you used to be?”, I would still say no.
Moreover, I persist in the belief that you are underestimating the sophistication of what was achieved by the experiments of our pre-20th C colleagues. Might I be so bold as to suggest you take off those rose-tinted retro-specs! Yes, some of their experiments might be reproducible by a well-informed 11 year old in a modern kitchen but, to my mind, that is not the point. The experiments of Lavoisier, Boyle, Hooke, Priestly, Cavendish etc. might seem simple enough today but I believe it mis-represents their achievements to say that “All kinds of amateurs managed to make scientific breakthroughs with a bit of dabbling.” These men may have been ‘amateurs’ since they had no university affiliation but they they had considerable wealth (or wealthy benefactors) – Boyle was the son of the Earl of Cork (!) – which was the only way they could afford to construct what were, for their time, highly sophisticated pieces of apparatus. OK they might pale somewhat besides today’s high-tech equipment, but these guys were making the high-tech stuff of their day. And Cameron is right to point out that you don’t need to know how to build the apparatus before you can use it productively. I wouldn’t now where to begin constructing a synchrotron like the new Diamond facility but I can make good use of the X-ray beam that it produces.
Did I miss the point again – perhaps this topic (thesis?) is too complex for a single discussion?
No Stephen, you didn’t – I think we’re getting in closer here. (And if we’re not, I demand the right to be correct. It’s my blog, and I’ll stamp my foot if I want to.)
I think what you say is true – they were still special for their day. However, equally, I do think it was still easier to understand what was going on without a postdoc in those days, because the maths was simpler in physics, the world was simpler (and it was only stamp collecting anyway) in chemistry/biology.
It’s true a lot of those amateurs were very clever/dedicated/rich – but even so, an amateur with a bit of enthusiasm could still do something, where now it’s rarely possible (with odd exceptions in, say, astronomy which I suppose in the Rutherford sense is still stamp collecting in that part of the field).
It wasn’t a totally serious post (sadly, mine rarely are)! Even so, it could be what we’re deducing is yes, scientists are geniuses – and they always were…
In retrospect, the questions seemed much bigger then, leaving subsequent generations (us) to fill in the gaps—and invent new questions, more challenging perhaps?
But maybe it only seems that way with hindsight.
I agree with Cameron – it has a lot to do with specialization. Beyond that, as we all used to say in grad school, the most important thing when trying to get a PhD is to really, really want one – more than anything, and definitely more than the nice fat salaries your friends in other careers are pulling down!
As for the technicality of the experiments: molecular biology is all about transferring tiny amounts of clear liquids to little plastic tubes, mixing them with other clear liquids, and keeping them at the right temperature for the right length of time. There’s nothing that I’ve ever done in a lab that I couldn’t have taught my 10 year old nephew to do. Of course, he wouldn’t have known why, which brings us back to the importance of inspiration compared to technical ability.
The most important instrument for a scientist is his/her brain. Then, as now, the most important part of being one of the giants that other people will later stand on is being able to tell when the conventional wisdom is wrong.
It didn’t take good experimental skills to figure out relativity. By 1905 there were many experiments that had shown quite conclusively that the speed of light was the same in each direction. Millikan was a much better experimentalist than Einstein. But it took Millikan decades longer to appreciate the photoelectric effect; rejecting it even while it was his data that had convinced nearly everyone else.
This is one of the difficulties of peer review. It is good for what Thomas Kuhn calls “ordinary science”. It is not so good when the paradigms that ordinary science is done with are wrong. Correcting wrong paradigms is extremely difficult. Scientific peers (wrongly) require extraordinary evidence to change wrong paradigms. That is they require much higher levels of evidence to abandon conventional thinking than the level of evidence that led to the adoption of the wrong paradigm in the first place (even though it was wrongly interpreted).
There are two main types of errors, type 1, the false positive, and type 2, the false negative. If everyone adopts your false positive, you can still get a Nobel Prize (as did those who developed the lobotomy). When publication and funding require seeing things a certain way certain types of blindness can develop. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed person is king. It didn’t take any fancy instruments or ability at mathematics for the child to see that the Emperor had no clothes. Once the child saw it, it became obvious to everyone else, even to the Emperor’s peers.
What paradigms do we have that are wrong? That is an excellent question, however paradigm breaking research is not likely to be funded, and paradigm breaking articles are not likely to be published.
Well Brian, I too thought we were converging for a moment but then you had to go and mention Rutherford. His remark about all other sciences being ‘stamp-collecting’ is just so much tosh (as I commented on another of your posts).
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree but I wonder is there really so much difference between the amateur enthusiasts of yore and today’s seasoned university ‘professionals’? I think you give us too much credit: most days I feel something of an amateur myself – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if it implies enthusiasm for the subject. And, forgive me, but I will resist your conclusion that scientist = genius. I think it’s a dangerous notion that could deter students from considering a career in science.
The can has been opened and there are worms everywhere…!
Stephen – I’m sure you know that the Rutherford remark was even a wind-up in his day, though to be fair I think physics envy did used to be a real condition.
Hey Brian – I confess I hadn’t appreciated Rutherford’s sense of humour! The remark gets a rise out of me because I have heard it repeated too many times, without the least trace of irony, by young physics students.
I’m intrigued – what was the original context of the remark? Do you know if it was written or spoken?
I think most scientists have to have a different sort of cleverness these days and it is much easier to get away with being average. Until the twentieth century they seemed to be intellectual giants – working alone to a large extent, responsible for all that they did. Nowadays scientists tend to be part of a team and have to look at the small part of a big problem. Most of them seem to work on a detail and the not the big picture. In some ways this is easier and doesn’t require such a huge intellect. But we still have geniuses too – rare people that see things differently – and for that I think David Whitlock above has expressed the situation very well.
Stephen – it’s quoted by J. B. Birks in Rutherford at Manchester but I don’t know the context in which it was said. I find it difficult to believe from all I’ve read about Rutherford that there wasn’t a certain amount of tongue in cheek. To be fair, though, the biology (for instance) he’d be thinking of was a very different beast to the current version.
Brian – thought you would appreciate this !