
From Boy Geniuses to Mad Scientists: Americans and Science (2017) - tintinnabula
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-americans-got-so-weird-about-science/
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whatshisface
> _You can see this phenomenon when the media goes wild for any child who
> makes a significant scientific breakthrough. Onion thinks the pressure on
> kids to hit on a groundbreaking discovery is not only unrealistic but also
> contrary to how most advances in science happen.

“We tend to see science as this mystical beast living in the sky that,
somehow, children see more clearly because they haven’t been clouded,” Onion
says._

Does anyone really see science or children that way? Kids make the news for
science because science has a reputation for being hard and children have a
reputation for not being very organized or driven compared to adults.

~~~
maxxxxx
“We tend to see science as this mystical beast living in the sky that,
somehow, children see more clearly because they haven’t been clouded,” Onion
says.

In tech you clearly see this. A lot of people believe that innovation can only
come from people who are at max 30 years old because anyone with some years
experience can't innovate anymore.

~~~
amelius
But if you look at great scientists/inventors, isn't it true that they are
generally making their biggest discovery before the age of 30?

~~~
mirimir
Isn't that the stereotype for mathematicians? Not so much about scientists and
inventors, I think.

~~~
maxxxxx
Newton and Einstein did their greatest work when pretty young. I am not sure
about others.

~~~
zyxwvu
What about Feynman or Leonardo Devinci?

Besides science and math build and progress slowly. Sometimes there's a new
discovery and suddenly there's a whole explosion of progress. Think calculus
or the even the computer. Which we're living in right now. But look at quantum
mechanics and computing, that's been progressing for the last the century or
so but it's progressing through continued and shared effort built upon
previous generations work.

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mirimir
It's an interesting article, albeit somewhat incoherent. And much of it could
be summarized as "America has always been fundamentally racist, sexist and
borderline anti-intellectual". That's surely an exaggeration. And it's not as
bad as it was some decades ago. Just maybe a little worse, just now.

But anyway, the Heinlein references remind me how much I love Joe Haldeman and
John Scalzi.

~~~
drb91
> That’s surely an exaggeration.

Not as much as you mught think! See: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
intellectualism_in_Amer...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
intellectualism_in_American_Life).

------
westoncb
> While researching her American Studies master’s thesis, Onion noticed that
> at the turn of the 20th century, children were portrayed as having a
> particular affinity for animals and the natural world in general, whether
> they’re catching fireflies, climbing trees, or digging in the dirt. At other
> times—say, 2017—children are thought to intuitively understand very
> unnatural modern technology like smartphones and laptops. “At different
> times in our history, people were invested in the ideas of children as being
> modern or as being anti-modern, which is a weird paradox I find
> fascinating,” Onion says.

It may be that the 'paradox' in our ideas of children being modern or anti-
modern at different times is just due to to the fact that at the turn of the
20th century children were often playing outside, and now they are often
playing with technology. I think generally when an academic misses something
as obvious as that, it's because they're straining to fit the data into a
probably not very good theory.

> “And then it came to me: Science is the link that connects man-made
> technology and the primitive natural world.” After all, scientists have to
> use microscopes to view and fully understand organic cells and microbes.

I had to laugh out loud here. Someone for whom it's a revelation that science
is the link between the natural world and technology is maybe not the best
person to attempt making the grand characterizations put forth in the article.

> The vast social project of science is ignored in favor of celebrity
> scientists mythologized as stubborn individuals—similar to cowboys on the
> frontier—who strike out on their own and discover unexplored territory. We
> see Thomas Edison as a relentless, pioneering entrepreneur and Albert
> Einstein as an out-of-the-box thinker. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Bill
> Gates were the swaggering “pirates of Silicon Valley” who created personal
> computing as we know it in their garages.

You could maybe say we _focus_ on Edison, Einstein, et al over your typical
scientist—but 1) It's obvious that we would do that—we admire the greats over
the regulars in every field 2) The phrasing of 'We see X as Y' is implying
that the attribution of Y to X is mistaken. But in all of those cases the
attributes given are uncontroversially accurate. It makes more sense in the
next sentence—but really, we only "see" Einstein as an "out-of-the-box
thinker"?

> Upper-middle-class white Victorians started to view childhood as a sacred
> time instead of seeing their kids as little adults who were put to work as
> soon as they could walk. Wealthier adults became smitten with images of cute
> white kids and chubby-cheeked cherubs. Black children, meanwhile, were
> depicted in ads and pop culture as wild, innately criminal, and precociously
> sexual.

While that is very unfortunate, it also bears zero connection to the article.

It appears that the quality bar on that site is appallingly low.

