Insights Thinking Outside The Box Versus Knowing What’s In The Box

[Greg Bernhardt]

Insights auto threads is broken atm, so I'm manually creating these for new Insight articles.

Someone who shows interest in science is initially a welcome development. So are fresh ideas from unexpected quarters. In contrast, there is a scientific community that is meticulously organized down to the last detail, allowing little to no external influence. With the invention of social media and other sites on the internet competing for content, unprecedented opportunities have opened up for everyone to make ideas and theories accessible to a broad public....

https://www.physicsforums.com/insig...side-the-box-versus-knowing-whats-in-the-box/

written by @fresh_42

 

[fresh_42]

I have to admit that I was lazy and didn't attach a list of references. Many citations are from various Wikipedia pages, either English or German ones (which I translated), but also from original papers (Planck, Noether, Einstein). We live in modern times, so I have all these papers on my hard drive. Means: I didn't want to trace back to the internet sites I found them on. However, when someone is interested in the original papers, I can provide the links here.

 

[Myroslav Mokhammad A]

I don't understood your post. Can you explain a bit more?

Regards,
Myroslav Mokhammad Abdeljawwad

 

[fresh_42]

I don't understood your post. Can you explain a bit more?

Regards,
Myroslav Mokhammad Abdeljawwad

The article, or was it that I didn't attach references from the files I downloaded?

 

[symbolipoint]

Of post #1 and the link---
Much too long to read.

Do you have a conclusion you want to share? Maybe another way to express a concept? An example to come from the long article in the hyperlink?

Some people collect data maybe even by observing the raw data themselves and then treat according to Statistics. When "Statistics" is used, some people often do not know 'what is the box, really' .

 

[fresh_42]

I'm not sure I understood you correctly. The article is a historical perspective of the, in my mind, biggest turning points in physics.

The résumé is that the only cases where independent research led to a significant result that I could find were Archimedes and Galois. Archimedes, because there was little known at all at his time, and Galois, who didn't publish himself and died way too young to determine how independent he really was.

But whenever you look into the details, you will find a sequence of results on which the groundbreaking ones were based. None of the great achievements has been a solitary result. The scientists were all part of academic circles one way or another. Independent research does not work.

 

[ShadowKraz]

Of post #1 and the link---
Much too long to read.

Do you have a conclusion you want to share? Maybe another way to express a concept? An example to come from the long article in the hyperlink?

Some people collect data maybe even by observing the raw data themselves and then treat according to Statistics. When "Statistics" is used, some people often do not know 'what is the box, really' .

That article was a long read? Well, summed up: the vast majority of scientific (and other) breakthroughs are the result of many people exchanging information, thoughts, and theories they have researched and worked out. The person(s) who make the breakthroughs are building upon the work of others with an added insight of their own, a realization of the connections between their predecessors' work. There are very, very few examples of someone working in complete isolation with zero knowledge or training making a breakthrough.

 

[ShadowKraz]

I don't understood your post. Can you explain a bit more?

Regards,
Myroslav Mokhammad Abdeljawwad

Responses #6 (from fresh_42) and #7 (mine) might help.

 

[Swamp Thing]

There are very, very few examples of someone working in complete isolation with zero knowledge or training making a breakthrough.

If Archimedes and Galois can make the list, then maybe so can someone who is generally in contact with the scientific zeitgeist around the discipline of their breakthrough, rather than growing up on a pre-contact intellectual island. In that case, how about Janos Bolyai and Ramanujan?

 

[fresh_42]

If Archimedes and Galois can make the list, ...

Archimedes had an empty field to cultivate. Galois had one idea for a very narrow problem. He would have been forgotten if it weren't for those who helped him:

The Academy [Académie des sciences de l’Institut de France, ed.] rejected the manuscript but encouraged Galois to submit an improved and expanded version. This process was repeated twice, with the participation of Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Joseph Fourier, and Siméon Denis Poisson.

... then maybe so can someone who is generally in contact with the scientific zeitgeist around the discipline of their breakthrough, ...

This is insufficient. He needs access to what is already in the box, i.e., a large scientific library. Otherwise, how should he know what had already been rebutted, and what criteria were necessary to count as a new theory?

... rather than growing up on a pre-contact intellectual island. In that case, how about Janos Bolyai and Ramanujan?

Ramanujan, who was extraordinarily gifted, shares the same fate as Galois. We never would have known him if there hadn't been Hardy.

János Bolyai came from the noble Bell family, a branch of the Kerpen noble family. He was the son of Farkas Bolyai, a professor of mathematics.
...
Bolyai successfully completed his engineering studies in 1822 and then devoted himself to scientific studies for a year.

This is hardly independent, the more so as Gauß was a friend and fellow student of his father.

 

[ShadowKraz]

If Archimedes and Galois can make the list, then maybe so can someone who is generally in contact with the scientific zeitgeist around the discipline of their breakthrough, rather than growing up on a pre-contact intellectual island. In that case, how about Janos Bolyai and Ramanujan?

See fresh_42's reply (#10). BUT the point is well made otherwise. I am quite certain that there have been times when a scientist (historian, writer, painter, etc) has had a friend, acquaintance, or random stranger with little knowledge in the field say something that set the light bulb off, so to speak. Inspiration and insight can be sparked by the slightest things that have little if anything to do with the field in question.