Depletion of the low-hanging fruit in science

First published:

Last Edited:

Number of edits:

There's this overreaching idea that science is harder every year because the easy work has already been done. Is it possible to have another Newton anytime soon?

Why scientific progress seems to be slower may be due just to perception. It may be that incentives work against truly innovative work [@bhattacharya2020Stagnation and Scientific Incentives], or it may be that Science after WWII has stagnated.

The idea of the low-hanging fruit has been looming around always. I seem to remember a story in which Planck's father tried to steer him out of Physics, "because everything was already invented."


Backlinks

These are the other notes that link to this one.

Comment

Share your thoughts on this note
Aquiles Carattino
Aquiles Carattino
This note you are reading is part of my digital garden. Follow the links to learn more, and remember that these notes evolve over time. After all, this website is not a blog.
© 2021 Aquiles Carattino
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Privacy Policy