
Why There Will Never be Another Da Vinci - wslh
http://timharford.com/2011/07/why-there-will-never-be-another-da-vinci/
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jballanc
Why fantasize about Da Vinci? Why not choose a subject much closer to our own
time like, say, Francis Crick? I recall a story he told that as a child he
wanted to become a scientists but was concerned that all the important
discoveries had already been made.

Really...if you don't know Crick's story, go read up! In his lifetime, man
went from not even being sure what category of chemical was responsible for
inheritance to sequencing the full human genome, and Crick was there for a
number of very important steps. Oh, and did I mention that he was originally
trained as a physicist? and that in his final years he was deeply involved in
neuroscience research concerned with the nature of consciousness?

For anyone who is really concerned with knowledge and its limits, I would also
recommend the book "Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of
Limits". Don't waste your time with this sort of pop science drivel...

~~~
jacquesm
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin>

~~~
jballanc
Had she only lived a bit longer...

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diiq
To be crude, this is bullshit. I am not a genius by any means whatsoever. I am
23. I have a degree in studio art, and I'm listed as a coauthor (along with
_small_ teams) on papers in machine learning AND biochemistry. It is 10,000
times EASIER to contribute to multiple fields today! There is still so much
that we do not know, and it is so much easier to learn the basics. This kind
of thinking, that we know almost everything, that we must specialize --- oooh,
it enrages me. I can walk into any lab in the country, and two years later,
have contributed significantly to published results; and that isn't a bold
claim about me --- that's a claim about how easy it is to learn new things,
and how much there is we do not yet know.

~~~
hartror
I think the OP is also talking about the impact Leonardo had on the fields he
worked in not just his scope. He made a similar impact that Einstein did in
physics but in a dozen different fields.

He was a polymath on an incredible scale.

~~~
diiq
Ah. So can you name a contribution Leonardo had that, like Einstein or Newton,
is still relevant today? Because he was working from scratch, much of what he
did was utterly wrong. His work on anatomy is astonishing, and the drawings
beautiful --- but not correct, nor even a particularly good approximation. He
also had no global system to spread his results, so what he did well
languished, undeveloped (the helicopter, parachute, some choice geological
ideas, etc. ) Leonardo was a genius --- but a genius of his ability would do
more, of more importance, in more fields, more correctly, and with more far-
reaching results, than Leonardo ever could in 1400's Italy.

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namank
Although your assertion is mathematically sound, do account for the fact that
Da Vinci devoted his entire life to learning. And interdisciplinary learning
at that!

While I won't argue that the sheer volume of knowledge swirling today is
exponentially greater than 500 years ago, its also very true that the type of
education Da Vinci received, mentor-disciple, is almost non-existant today.
The kind of personality he had, free-flowing (procrastinating and whimsical)
and curious, is not suited to the current society's reward structure; in fact,
its discourage by all but the very best of the schools.

Sure, Da Vinci didn't have to learn calculus, but just how do you explain the
amount of detail his work shows? He conceptualized SCUBA generations ago. In
his design for underwater breathing apparatus, Da Vinci, was very particular
about the details. Details that people today use computer simulations to
figure out, when not the experience itself.

And finally, Leonardo may have had less to learn because everything was as
intuitive as the physical world, but the situation today is not so different.
We are now closer to first principles than ever. Tomorrow's Da Vinci won't
solve puzzles, he will build them.

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jonnathanson
With the increasing specialization of almost every field of scientific and
even artistic endeavor, it's becoming more and more impossible for any one
person to master multiple fields. Especially very different ones, like, say,
quantum mechanics and songwriting. (Though I'm sure someone will quickly
provide evidence of a string theorist who's also quite handy with the cello).

If we take the "10,000 hour" rule as even a rough basis for mastery -- to
speak nothing of the years and years of academic credentialing necessary to be
taken seriously in many fields -- then the math quickly tells the story.

As others have pointed out in this thread, Einstein seems like the closest
we've seen to Da Vinci in many centuries. His accomplishments spanned almost
every facet of physics -- a field that, even in the first half of the 20th
century, was very broad and full of nearly insurmountable gulfs between sub-
disciplines. But even Einstein would seem narrowly accomplished by Da Vinci's
standards. That's not because Einstein wasn't Da Vinci's intellectual equal
(he probably was), but because the nature of the game has changed so
fundamentally and thoroughly since the Renaissance.

All that said, despite the hyperspecialization of everything these days, some
big and important breakthroughs seem to come from cross-pollinization of
disciplines. The world is still quite ripe for gap-bridgers and box-busters;
in fact, some would argue that we need these people now more than ever.

~~~
ludwigvan
> (Though I'm sure someone will quickly provide evidence of a string theorist
> who's also quite handy with the cello).

Does bongo count? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTSaezB4p8>

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keiferski
Actually, historians argue about the level of impact da Vinci had on science,
with many saying "not very much." This is because his notebooks were not
published for centuries after his death. Most of his "scientific observations"
were only to quench his personal curiosity.

In a sense, then, we can all still become da Vincis. Da Vinci was big on
learning from experience, rather than by reading the works of others. Nothing
is stopping a person alive today from observing nature and learning from it,
in the same manner of Leonardo.

Will you be learning things that are already in a book somewhere? Most likely,
yes, but I think that isn't really the point; the quest for knowledge may be
more important than the acquistion of it.

Also, consider that many breakthroughs/innovations are from new entrants to a
field# ie those who aren't experts in the new field. (Of course this may not
apply to science as much as another field, but it's worth pondering
regardless)

#See "The Medici Effect"

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ColinWright
Submitted a week ago [1] and ignored. Submitted again, timing just right, lots
of comments and discussion.

I feel that HN is broken in some fundamental way. The community decides this
is worth reading and commenting on, and it gets missed first time round. How
many other interesting links get completely ignored and lost.

I worry, I worry ...

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2745315>

~~~
photon_off
I think there's a rather large snowball effect in play here, and during the
first hours of a post where the snowball should first form, there's massive
randomness in what activity will befall a post. The fact that an article is
genuinely interesting doesn't guarantee it's spot on the front page, it just
greatly increases it's odds.

What is of more concern to me is that all of the front page articles are
genuinely interesting. To me HN does pretty well in this regard. There are so
many interesting things out there that it doesn't bother me if some of them
slip through the cracks and never reach the HN frontpage.

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sliverstorm
This brings a discomforting question to mind. Abstraction, simplification,
etc- will they hold up? Or will we reach a point where to make progress your
average scientist must spend a lifetime learning what is currently known? (And
thus, simply not have enough time in a life to make progress?)

On the other hand, what do we do when we rely on abstraction and computers so
much that we depend upon knowledge that is no longer known by man, and only by
computer?

If we manage to expand into space, and especially if we figure out ftl
communication, perhaps this can be solved by having "enough" minds, and
linking them up into... a hive mind...

~~~
bestes
I felt like every subject I took in school was like this. We started at the
beginning of time, then worked through all the important people and
discoveries, etc. But, never, did we reach the state-of-the-art. That was very
discouraging.

When learning On my own, I simply start with today, the fill in history as
necessary. I don't know FORTRAN or COBOL, for example. There are other
examples where this is costing me, but I can't give those examples.

~~~
static_cast
I think it is a little bit different:

Fortran and COBOL are implementations of imperative programming languages. The
ideas did not change. You still use while, for, if constructs in your
ruby/python/java code.

only another level of abstractions was added now with object principles, you
can create your own types, you can use polymorphism

but without an idea of imperative programming you would not be able to use
these "new" languages (functional programming left aside)

I think it is the same with science, at least regarding physics - einstein did
not proove newton wrong. he just extended his theory so that it would better
describe the reality (in this case: what happens when you approach speed of
light) but for most calculations newton's formulas are still fine.

I was turned off when I started college why I had to learn so much cs theory,
but once you start to understanding the concepts and ideas behind certain
things you are (theoretical) able to dissect the latest hype look and
understand why things are the way they are.

tl;dr: learn concepts and ideas not specific implementations

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devilant
Asimov wrote a short story ("The Dead Past" I think it was) that extrapolated
this idea into the near-future, where scientific advancement would be so
expensive and require such narrow specialization that it could only be done by
governments.

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azza-bazoo
The title is a bit silly, of course science has advanced since the 1500s and
you need to focus on one sub-field to make a contribution. But I think the
point towards the end is a good one -- that advancements in science will
increasingly require effort put to organising teams, and improving
institutions to support research.

He mentions patents, which we all know are broken, and financial firms
poaching scientists ... and funding, which everyone I know in grad school
complains about one way or another (i.e. "we could do better work if it
weren't for all the grant applications"). But I doubt that worthwhile change
will happen to any of these in a hurry.

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the_cat_kittles
What if we uncover a "whole new world" of unknowns? How do you know we won't?

~~~
TeMPOraL
We might. Physicists were sure they know everything there is to know at least
two times during the last two centuries.

------
PaulHoule
For a long time I've liked Horgan's book "The End Of Science", although you'll
never meet a working scientist who thinks the book has any value.

It's definitely true that people are writing more papers than they've ever had
and there's nothing to stop that trend.

On the other hand, Albert Einstein was able to discover some amazing things
with simple pencil-and-paper calculations. The last "big theory" in
fundamental physics to be confirmed in the lab was the electroweak interaction
and that was 1983. Many of the great physicists of our day, such as Ed Witten
and Steven Hawking have never had a prediction confirmed in an experiment.

To be fair, there has been some excitement in experimental fundamental physics
in the last few years. Neutrino oscillations are confirmed, there are
glimmerings of dark matter, and something interesting might happen at the LHC.
However, even if Superstring theory is true, it's possible that's there is
very little new physics left to be discovered within reasonable reach.

Now, look at other fields and you find similar stories. There is a huge amount
to discover in the field of biology, but there's never going to be another
Darwin or Crick.

All fields of knowledge face limits that are caused by undecidability --
computer scientists know they can't solve the halting problem by static
analysis, and the field of classical chaos has been dead for decades. There's
a linear plane, and a handful of systems that can be solved exactly, each with
a pertubative island around it, and then a vast undecidable ocean.

He touches on the career problems of people in physics, which is probably the
field that's been the most pathological for the longest. When I got my PhD in
1998, the APS estimated that fewer than 3% of us would get permanent work in
the field. I found it quite hard to find a professor in my department who
didn't have at least one professor for a parent, so the odds for a bright kid
who comes from a working class background and loves science are a lot worse
than that.

For all we know we could be producing 10 Einsteins a decade but only keeping 2
in a lifetime.

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astrofinch
Having endured the public education system as a child, I'm optimistic that
there is a lot of room for improvement where child development is concerned.
That could be a good path to younger, more competent scientists and maybe lots
of other cool stuff.

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petercooper
I remember reading articles in the late 90s about how games were becoming so
complicated and expensive to develop that indie game developers would die out
and everything would need to be a multi-million dollar funded blockbuster.
Oops.

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jinushaun
I call BS. If anything, there won't be another Da Vinci because the brightest
minds of our day are busy trying to make us click more ads.

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jgamman
would you know it if you saw it happening real time? i don't understand
Wolfram's ideas of computation but no-one doubts he's insanely smart - what if
his idea is the only one 22nd century science considers as revolutionary in
the early 21st century? maybe it's always the same in hindsight.

