Excellent stuff. Another factor in stagnation, I'd argue, is institutional. The organization of scientific bodies into large collaborations focused on obtaining federal research grants tends to discourage disruptive innovation, for a variety of reasons: no one wants to upset apple carts; bureaucrats more concerned with guaranteed results than speculative, high risk/high reward endeavors; collective action problems inside the collaborations. In many ways science becomes a social game, in which political specialists who are successful at navigating collaborations, obtaining grants, and getting their names onto 'high impact' papers, tend to outcompete the genuinely insightful.
One might almost wonder if this is all quite deliberate. A less innovative society is one in which the existing elite can more easily maintain its power.
Btw, there's a missing quote from Strauss, after "Strauss offers a striking account of the goals of the modern political philosophers:".
Yes, that is a great point re organizational structure. The selection pressures pick out people who are good at navigating bureaucratic mazes and who are drawn by the prestige of the grants, which as you point out, are only going to be given to people who have tame projects.
Right. Which then leads to prestige-seeking.sophists displacing the truth-motivated natural philosophers (who were the ones who made the field prestigious to begin with).
Then there's the Woman Question, a whole topic in itself. Head girls turning academic departments into nests. But that's a relatively late stage phenomenon, not so relevant to the stagnation observed since the 70s.
Excellent stuff. Another factor in stagnation, I'd argue, is institutional. The organization of scientific bodies into large collaborations focused on obtaining federal research grants tends to discourage disruptive innovation, for a variety of reasons: no one wants to upset apple carts; bureaucrats more concerned with guaranteed results than speculative, high risk/high reward endeavors; collective action problems inside the collaborations. In many ways science becomes a social game, in which political specialists who are successful at navigating collaborations, obtaining grants, and getting their names onto 'high impact' papers, tend to outcompete the genuinely insightful.
One might almost wonder if this is all quite deliberate. A less innovative society is one in which the existing elite can more easily maintain its power.
Btw, there's a missing quote from Strauss, after "Strauss offers a striking account of the goals of the modern political philosophers:".
Yes, that is a great point re organizational structure. The selection pressures pick out people who are good at navigating bureaucratic mazes and who are drawn by the prestige of the grants, which as you point out, are only going to be given to people who have tame projects.
Quote restored!
Right. Which then leads to prestige-seeking.sophists displacing the truth-motivated natural philosophers (who were the ones who made the field prestigious to begin with).
Then there's the Woman Question, a whole topic in itself. Head girls turning academic departments into nests. But that's a relatively late stage phenomenon, not so relevant to the stagnation observed since the 70s.