On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 1:18 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 5/21/2014 3:44 PM, LizR wrote: > >> Yes, I was indeed thinking of the superhero Bicycle Repair Man when I >> wrote that. >> >> However I'm not so keen on deifying the Wright brothers when they were >> just two in a long line of people in many countries who gradually developed >> powered flight. They did make a significant improvement, of course, but >> there were plenty of others who helped pave the way to modern aeroplanes >> (including one somewhat dubious claim from New Zealand) >> > > Interestingly in the context of this thread, one of the Wright brother's > main contributions was their systematic (dare I say "scientific") approach > using a wind tunnel to study air foils. > It is perhaps good to make a distinction between "science: the method" and "science: the game". Although honest scientists will attempt to focus on the former and avoid the pitfalls of the latter, honest scientists are human beings with human emotions and bills to pay. So the end results is always some combination of the two. I think this is unavoidable, but good to be aware of, especially in times when the needle moves to much to the game side. "Science: the method" is all about generating hypothesis and testing them. Generating hypothesis is a creative process, and I don't think that academia was ever a particularly good environment for creativity. It's relationship to it is a bit bipolar: it eventually glorifies the successful creative thinkers, but it fights creativity every step of the way until then. Part of this behaviour is for good reasons, but part is pathological, I would say. This is also true of the relationship between academia and art, if you look at how the major artistic movements of the XX century were received at first. So it's not so surprising that academia is side-stepped to achieve invention, which doesn't mean at all that "science: the method" is thrown out of the window. In fact, academia tries very hard to create a monopoly on "science" but this is perverse. Anyone can apply the scientific method. It doesn't care about formal qualifications, institutions, or even scientific journals or peer-review. It will wield its results regardless -- and that is beautiful in my view. A bit like the hacker's ethos in the 80s that lead to a lot of the permission-free innovation in computer systems that we enjoy today. > > Brent > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
