In search of the black swans
Awesome article outlining concepts such as black swans, science, and the future.
Note: This article was sent to me by Max Olson.(Thanks buddy)
Click Here To Read About The Search For Black Swans
Article Introduction (Via Physics World)
The publish-or-perish ethic too often favours a narrow and conservative approach to scientific innovation. Mark Buchanan asks whether we are pushing revolutionary ideas to the margins.
In 1890 an electricity company enticed the German physicist Max Planck to help it in its efforts to make more efficient light bulbs. Planck, as a theorist, naturally started with the fundamentals and soon became enmeshed in the thorny problem of explaining the spectrum of black-body radiation, which he eventually did by introducing the idea — a “purely formal” assumption, as he then considered it — that electromagnetic energy can only be emitted or absorbed in discrete quanta. The rest is history. Electric light bulbs and mathematical necessity led Planck to discover quantum theory and to kick start the most significant scientific revolution of the 20th century.
Additional Excerpts (Via Physics World)
This raises an important question: does today’s scientific culture respect this reality? Are we doing our best to let the most important and most disruptive discoveries emerge? Or are we becoming too conservative and constrained by social pressure and the demands of rapid and easily measured returns? The latter possibility, it seems, is of growing concern to many scientists, who suggest that modern science is in danger of losing its creativity unless we can find a systematic way to build a more risk-embracing culture.
New Einsteins, he points out, will not be working in areas that have been well established for decades. They may not even work in an area linked to the name of any established, senior scientist. New Einsteins may be slipping out of view and out of science altogether just because our scientific culture currently simply has no way of encouraging them.
