Despite what politicians and academics tell: in most areas scientific and technological progress is actually slowing down.
In his book Scientific Progress, the German-American philosopher Nicholas Rescher made a clear and compelling case that the well-known principle of diminishing marginal utility also applies to the progress of knowledge in the natural sciences. First, the low-hanging fruit was plucked from the tree of knowledge. Now, it is becoming increasingly costly to achieve relevant results. This thesis can be illustrated with a simple argument: the number of scientists worldwide has increased by at least a factor of 100 between 1900 and 2020, while the number of Nobel Prizes awarded each year has remained constant. It is clear that if the massive increase in resources for science had been accompanied by a similar increase in Nobel Prize-worthy results, the number of candidates for the award would have been teeming.
The fact is, however, that in the absence of concrete breakthroughs, Nobel Prizes are increasingly being awarded for the lifetime achievements of scientists whose names are barely remembered. On the other hand, discoveries of early laureates such as Konrad Röntgen (Nobel Prize in Physics 1901 for the discovery of X-rays), Marie Curie (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel for the study of radioactivity and Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 for the discovery of the chemical element radium) or Robert Koch (Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1905 for the discovery of the tuberculosis bacillus) are still taught in textbooks in every school. This bold argument can be supported by findings from the sociology of science. For example, a quantitative analysis of the 25 million scientific articles listed in the Web of Science database for the period 1945-2010, based on citation frequencies, came to the conclusion that the proportion of breakthrough discoveries, which had a decisive influence on the further course of scientific development, decreased dramatically in the second half of the 20th century.
The decline in fundamental breakthroughs in science is not only due to the fact that new discoveries become more difficult and costly the more is already known, but also has to do with the way science communicates. Let us illustrate this with a parable: Let's imagine a group of explorers who arrive on an unknown and uninhabited island, covered with dense jungle and therefore very impassable. To get an overview, some of the group set out to explore the island. With their machetes, they laboriously cut their way through the jungle. After a while they discover several fresh water springs, caves and bushes with edible fruits. The other members of the group follow the pioneers and continue along the paths they have already taken. The caves become their new homes, they cook and clean at the springs, and they use the bushes as a food source. Eventually, the trails they painstakingly carve through the jungle become wide tracks that allow them to move quickly and easily. It never occurred to anyone to leave the beaten path. Only many years later, when a young man got lost in the thicket, did he realize that there was a much shorter path between one of the springs and the caves. He also discovered another kind of shrub with edible fruit.
This parable describes the situation in science today: the knowledge that is considered certain is like the well-trodden paths on which everyone moves forward. Just like on the highway, you are not allowed to stop at the side of the road and get out of the car to explore the surroundings on foot. Anyone who does will be quickly taken out of circulation. This is because top scientists control who can participate in the scientific community, what can be published in journals, and what can be presented at conferences. Anything that deviates too much from the accepted mainstream is unacceptable and does not find its way into the channels of scientific communication. This quality assurance, known as peer review, serves a good purpose in keeping out the crackpots and nonsense. But like everything else, it also has a downside: radical new ideas have little chance of being heard and therefore little chance of being accepted.
In fact, radically new ideas and approaches in the history of knowledge have often come from people outside the established scientific community: Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a Swiss patent clerk, not a professor of theoretical physics, when he developed and published his special theory of relativity in 1905. Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) was a successful merchant and amateur archaeologist who rediscovered Troy. The creator of the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin (1809-1882), was a private scholar. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a librarian in Hanover and Wolfenbüttel; the University of Leipzig had denied him a doctorate. In general, most of the pioneers of modern science were not full-time scientists, but engaged in scientific pursuits privately. Some scientists, such as Charles Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), were wealthy private individuals, while others, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), were full-time statesmen and part-time scientists. Modern science is essentially the result of private enterprise, not the product of universities, which until 150 years ago had only four faculties: theology, law, medicine, and philosophy.
Whereas in the past the advancement of knowledge was the exclusive province of a very small and manageable group of people, today science is a large-scale industrial enterprise. In Germany alone, there are 50,000 professorships and more than half a million people employed in research and development. Every year, more than 2 million scientific publications are published worldwide. A single dissenting opinion is ignored in this loud chorus, if it is even given a chance to be expressed in an accepted scientific communication channel.
The growth of the scientific community was accompanied by specialization in subjects and disciplines. Universal scholars such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Rene Descartes (1596-1650), or Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), who had a broad overview of knowledge and contributed to the advancement of knowledge in a wide variety of fields, are now considered to be excluded. Those who realistically assess their intellectual abilities and career opportunities in academia will not fall for the idea of turning the established canon of knowledge upside down, but will instead concentrate on the hard work of advancing the frontier of known knowledge in a manageable way. In this way, narrow paths of knowledge have become wide highways.
However, this self-restriction to the progress of knowledge in the smallest areas along the known paths prevents us from finding shortcuts between established areas of knowledge or even opening up completely new areas of knowledge. As in the parable of the discoverers of an island described at the beginning, no one considers it necessary to leave the beaten track in search of shortcuts. Our knowledge of the island is dominated by the broad paths that have been paved in the course of the history of knowledge. Since professional scientists only move along the well-trodden paths on small sections of the island, there is no coherent overview of the entire island. It therefore takes courage and youthful recklessness to deviate from the familiar paths and penetrate the dense jungle.
The authors of deep-thought.org set off into the jungle to find shortcuts and connections between familiar paths on the island of knowledge. In order to find our way around, we took two tools with us to help us find our way: The first tool is a heuristic we call the ontogenealogical method, which can be used to analyze any real object. The second tool is stability systems theory, the basic concepts of which can be applied in many fields of knowledge.
We dared to do something that is considered impossible for good reasons. We had to pay a price for it: We could only pursue our endeavor as a hobby alongside our actual professional activities and not as professional scientists who are paid to think. And secondly, we have to accept that we cannot be true experts in any field of knowledge. On the other hand, we will hopefully be able to identify previously unnoticed cross-connections between different fields of knowledge and find a few pieces of the puzzle along the way that can complete our existing knowledge of the world. We have tried out a few hard nuts to see whether our approach really promises success: The big and small world mysteries.
Reading recommendations:
- Michael Park, Erin Leahey und Russel J. Funk: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time, Nature Vol 613 (2023), S. 138-144.
- John Horgan: An den Grenzen des Wissens, Luchterhand München 1997 (englisches Original: The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Science in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, Broadway Books New York 1996).
- Nicholas Rescher: Wissenschaftlicher Fortschritt, De Gruyter Berlin 1982 (englisches Original: Scientific Progress, Basil Blackwell Oxford 1978).
- Thomas S. Kuhn: Die Struktur wissenschaftlicher Revolutionen, Suhrkamp Franfurt/Main 1976 (englisches Original: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press 1962).
- Ludwik Fleck: Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache - Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv, Schwabe Basel 1935.
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