Who has the big new ideas? — wax

Are there, in fact, big new ideas? As a non-scientist but interested science observer what I see is a lot of incremental progress where the increments are quite small. Scientists ought not feel ashamed to maintain slow and steady progress.

Science and technology make big advances at fairly widely and irregularly spaced intervals, with decades of followup to fully exploit the big new ideas. Take steam power, made practical by Watt in 1775. A century of development followed, and steam still turns generator turbines, even if the water is heated with a nuclear reaction. Electricity became a practical form of propulsive energy in the 1885 (to pick an arbitrary date). Radio waves were used for trans-Atlantic communication in 1901. Radio is alive and well in radio, television, cell phones, and photographic transmission from Ultima Thule by the New Horizon space ship 1 billion miles beyond Pluto. All of that represents a lot of increment cooked up by very bright minds.

I don't know if we can sort out the influence of intuition and logic. It isn't like ideas come tagged with their content source -- like, "this theory is 55% intuition and 45% logic". Logic and intuition are partners, not distant competitors.

Until relatively recently, a lot of innovations in technology were brought about by amateurs and people who were not scientists by training and title. One of the reasons why progress was not faster at times was that many of the people who were interested in projects didn't know what they were doing. For instance, the "technical advisor" to Cyrus Field (who laid the trans-Atlantic telegraph cables in 1858) did not know much about electricity and made several significant contributions to the failure of the first cable. Better advice was obtained for the second attempt from William Thomson, who we know as Lord Kelvin, famous scientist.

I don't know if we can sort out the influence of intuition and logic. It isn't like ideas come tagged with their content source -- like, "this theory is 55% intuition and 45% logic". Logic and intuition are partners, not distant competitors. — Bitter Crank

let's say you always need some intuition to solve problems. A problem is like unknown territory, in which intuition is analogous to sending out scouts.

To make small advanced you only need information about a short distance to find a solution, with small problems.

A big idea requires more than just micro advantages. Say an army needs to get somewhere. It can get there in small advances, but even then it might end up going down a blind alley.

If the army needed to get to the moon, small advances would never get you there, you'd need to co-opt ideas from many fields to find a way. One solution, in that case would be to build a rocket, which is 'a giant leap' in terms of advancing into unknown territory.

A big idea is like that; connecting different realms of thought into something new, in order to make a big advance.

I think to solve a problem, you have to recognise that there is a problem.

To recognise small problems leads to the solving of small problems.

To recognise big problems, in a meaningful way, allows you to solve big problems.

This means being able to see a complex problem, and how it relates to possible solutions from other areas of thought. Previous and existing area of though are maybe problems that have already been solved, to some extent..

A big idea is the solving of a big problem, and I think creative intuitive thought can usually be better at doing that.

say there are two system/ways of perceiving reality...P for prescriptive, in that P will only accept stuff which meets it on preconceived view of reality.
And C, for a view of reality which allows for new ways of perceiving reality which may not fit into their original way of perceiving reality and so allow for Change.

I think there are too many P systems in science, and not enough C systems...unfortunately P systems with a bit of C thrown in, do well in the education system, and people with a more balanced P/C ratio don't always do so well.

Change can be scary, so maybe this is often why high P ratio people do well, and society often adopts the P way of perceiving reality, and thinking process.

People who may not be as good at the technical stuff, but operate far more intuitively, may not do so well in education in the sciences. — wax

I totally agree!!!

Who actually has the big new ideas in science? Is it the analytical people, or is it the more intuitive and creative people? — wax

I would say the the more intuitive people but the education system pumps out the analytical, or should I say those that follow the norm or guidelines and do not encourage out of box thinkers.

Analytical logical people might be good at understanding existing theories, and fleshing out other people's ideas, but can they come up with much in the way of new insights, and new ideas, themselves? — wax

I do not know, but gathering other peoples ideas and mixing them with other peoples ideas takes quite some time and much reading and effort. To come to some formulation of your own. And present it in a new and never before thought of way.
This requires great skill and an enormous amount of effort and understanding not knowledge knowledge and understanding are two distinct things.

These people might often occupy the higher levels of scientific authority, and that might lead to new ideas arising, not flourishing....indeed, a new theory might require more intuition even to analyse how it fits in with scientific thinking.....I dunno... — wax

I am in total agreement on this one brother.

yes, the education doesn't want the stuff it teaches challenged...for obvious reasons.

It leads to science too often being about micro-advances; micro-callenges....which as I said is more akin to research and development, than science.
A few cranks get through with their wacky ideas, and are good enough at the analytical stuff to have their ideas taken seriously...it is these people who advance science, which is all that makes it science...

Is there a tendency to sideline the people who actually advance science, within the scientific community? — wax

My answer to this is a definite YES!!!

Humans resist any other humans that differ with them, especially if they think they are gifted and the top dog smartest in the bunch, which is rather sad, I would always prefer to be second in command to the smartest dude on a deserted island that could hunt, fish, trap, make a map and any other shit that we needed to survive.

yes, the education doesn't want the stuff it teaches challenged...for obvious reasons.

It leads to science too often being about micro-advances; micro-challenges....which as I said is more akin to research and development, than science.
A few cranks get through with their wacky ideas, and are good enough at the analytical stuff to have their ideas taken seriously...it is these people who advance science, which is all that makes it science... — wax

I agree totally, they do not teach us to be thinkers, but followers of a set designed plan of how to be, but the human mind like you and I have the ability to adapt and become other so they cannot control all of us but a large portion are not as capable as us.

WE SEE!!!

yes, the education doesn't want the stuff it teaches challenged...for obvious reasons. It leads to science too often being about micro-advances; micro-challenges....which as I said is more akin to research and development, than science. — wax

We will all agree that the education system sucks in ever so many ways. But I don't know how we conduct education to foster intuitional thinking in science (or anything else). One possibility is to minimize immediate goal oriented thinking.

Left to their own devices, people are more likely to think intuitively than when they are being rigidly directed by bosses. That's my theory, anyway. Of course, people left to their own devices sometimes fail to not get much done.

Take for example Bell Laboratories. It was a think tank operated by the Bell Telephone System (back in the day when Bell Telephone was a monopoly). Their job was to do basic electronic research. Among other things, Bell labs is where the transistor came from; they discovered background microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang, and so on. They weren't oriented toward specific goals like how to make the rotary dial telephone spin faster. They were doing open ended research that might or might not pay off, and the pay off didn't have to be a product -- nobody made money off the background microwave radiation field (as far as I know).

I think I flagged your post by accident. Sorry

I realize this thread is one month old, but still I agree, scientific education is about accepting, memorizing and applying, then scientific research (the way it's done these days) is mostly about making small tweaks to what was accepted and memorized through education. The scientific community rejects what doesn't fit into its paradigm of the era, and protects its paradigm by refusing to publish or to fund research that challenges big parts of this paradigm. To keep their career, scientists have to get funded and have to be published, so they have to go with the status quo. Those who attempt to go too much against the flow are ridiculed and ostracized. So the big machine keeps going, making small tweaks, more precise measurements, delves into more and more complexity with diminishing returns. Is that because there's nothing important left to discover, or because they're going the wrong way and refuse to explore other potentially fruitful paths?

They might find out if thinking outside the box was encouraged, but scientific education these days is precisely about shaping people to think within the box, so that's what we get, scientists thinking inside the box. We explore all the tiny details inside the box, and never go outside to see what might be there.

At this point the only thing that could change this is someone coming up with a radically different theory that would explain more than the current ones, somehow having been able to step out of the box of mainstream education and with enough private funding to keep researching for years or decades, and with enough intuition and courage and persistence to keep going for so long against the flow.

But even then it's not certain that the scientific community would listen, why would they consider seriously something published by some unknown individual that wasn't published through the proper research journals, that didn't pass the proper process of peer review that safeguards the paradigm of the time, why would they take seriously something that contradicts the concepts and beliefs that are the foundations of their education and of their career, why would they take seriously something that could threaten their very career and means of subsistence if taken seriously? Why would the science journalists report on something that didn't receive the approbation of or would be ridiculed by the authoritative figures on science? Then if the vast majority of people get their scientific news from science journalists or from renowned scientists, who would listen?

Maybe the machine can't be stopped at this point, until the diminishing returns become too low to justify keeping it going. And only then, maybe, there will be room to start anew and explore unexplored paths.