webb202 said:
If you move between disciplines you will discover different thinking models. Yes mainstream science has made incredible progress, yes we need hard proof of theories, but when you are inside a thinking mode box you do not realize how constrained your outlook is! Convergent thinkers all think alike and are blind to alternative approaches. Methods of communication are many and varied but are of no use if the recipients are not listening.
At first glance this appears to be an informative and thoughtful post. However, a deeper look at the post and your previous posts on this topic reveals it to be shallow and lacking in my opinion. Specifically, it relies on the assumption that scientists are 'convergent thinkers' who are blind to alternative approaches. I strongly disagree with this. Scientists' ways of thinking are as varied as their personalities, which range an entire spectrum just like everyone else.
What education does is to provide scientists with proven tools and methods to help them identify new phenomena and systematically form an organized, coherent, and self-consistent explanation for these phenomena. These tools and methods encompass everything from mathematics classes to lab reports to using Excel. You might as well say that the tools in a wood working shop constrain someone's thinking about what they can make out of wood. Instead, it is
how things are made that is constrained, not
what. So it is in science.
webb202 said:
Most of our greatest leaps forward in knowledge have been through the fusion of ideas outside the 'mainstream'.
No they haven't. Practically
all of our 'leaps forward' have come directly from mainstream theories. Meaning that you introduce one or two postulates to a mainstream theory and see what the results would be.
Quantum Mechanics: the direct result of quantizing energy, momentum, angular momentum, and other properties from classical physics at the atomic and subatomic scale. This did not come right out of the blue. Many different experiments at the time indicated that classical physics was missing something, and it was only with Max Planck's idea of quantizing the energy of a black body that these problems began to be solved. If you look at the history of QM you'll find that each step towards the development of a working theory was the direct result of someone working on a known problem in classical physics.
Special Relativity: the direct result of Einstein solving known problems in classical electrodynamics by introducing the postulates of the invariant speed of light and the principle of relativity. Both of these were already supported by contemporary experiments, such as the Michelson-Morley experiment.
General Relativity: the direct result of Einstein recognizing that objects in free fall under the influence of gravity would measure zero acceleration and behave as if they were moving inertially. IE objects in free fall are in inertial motion and objects not in free fall (such as a book on a shelf) are not in inertial motion. Once recognized, the basics of GR follow naturally from this property. Again, this was a short but complicated insight that follows directly from classical physics.
So which of our leaps forward have been the result of the fusion of non-mainstream ideas? If you think that the above are examples of non-mainstream ideas, then
everything is a non-mainstream idea until it is fully explained by science. But in that case science is already doing exactly what you say it isn't, which is routinely providing non-mainstream ideas to solve problems.
One should note that none, absolutely none of these advancements would have been made without an in-depth understanding of contemporary classical physics and the advanced mathematics given to these scientists by their own education system. Not too bad for men supposedly close-minded and blind to alternative approaches.
I'm sorry but I think your idea of science and scientists is one of a caricature. A shallow, one-dimensional idea of men in lab coats scribbling equations on a whiteboard while oblivious to the rest of the world. Of bumbling, socially-inept nerds who can't understand girls or poetry. Scientists are not inflexible robots that have a short circuit if something falls outside their limited programming. They are real people with an enormous range of backgrounds and interests, giving them, as a whole, as wide and flexible an outlook on the world as any other group of people, if not more.
Education tends to open one's mind, not close it.