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Posted: |
Mar 24, 2015 - 10:20 AM
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By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
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It doesn't explain how flashes of insight that actually explains the trigger for an experience can actually correlate very closely to what one can expect to observe with experimentation - without having actually done the experimenting. Statistically accrued judgement would throw every statically developed idea out the window if peer review were strictly adhered to.
Take Newton and calculus. As sometimes happens in science, two coincidental discoveries can occur almost at the same time. The brits and the continentals spent years arguing over who got there first - Newton or Leibnitz? Then there is Einstein and relativity. If he had not got there, then when could the theory have been realised within a realistic timeframe post Einstein? The best example by far is Gregor Mendel. He actually used correctly deduced statistical evidence to advance his ideas about genetic inheritence and do you know what happened. Nothing. No-one listened to his revelation until after he was history. His paper was discovered by an interested party some time after it had been written, when the hard work expended for it had become dust - just like Van Gogh.
The point is, of course, the brilliance of correctly postulated insight. Take, for example, mathematical proof. The methods of this type of proof are supposedly rigorous. How does anyone know that a proof that has been written down is actually correct? What is it about the formal pursuit of a proof that is leading it's investigator in the right direction, especially when no-one has been there before? For this I cite Andrew Wiles and his 7 year quest to solve Fermat's Last Theorem. Now here's a thought. Fermat said he had a solution but he neglected to write down what it was. Can it be correctly deduced by a majority that he did not, in fact, have a solution worth whatever medium it was printed on? Something beyond the realm of normal experience is what takes us over the horizon. Let's also not forget that this type of apparently irrational thinking bears some statistical relevance.
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Posted: |
Mar 24, 2015 - 1:04 PM
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By: |
mastadge
(Member)
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Grecchus, I agree with you, but I think there's more to it, too. There's no doubt that Crick was an amazing genius. But also, up until then, science was still (almost) small enough that you could be largely on top of it. Science, like so many other fields, has ballooned so quickly over the past few decades, has gotten so specialized and subdivided, that you no longer have as many situations like you did in Cambridge then where the molecular biologist and the p-chemist happened to have a chat during tea with the crystallographer, and they were all able to understand each other and, boom, history was made. No longer can you openly discuss your findings before they're published. No longer is there a tea-time and a department small enough that great minds can come together over tea. Interdisciplinary genius is maybe no longer so spontaneous as it was once possible for it to be.
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