Would scientists like Darwin and Einstein be as "big" in the era of the Internet?

Great Debates
1

Darwin and Einstein are like gods of science now, and so they ever shall be. It seems that once someone’s stature in the culture takes hold long and well enough, like the roots of a tree, it can never be lessened. Indeed, I think 1,000 years from now they will be remembered as being just as “big” as they are now. If anything, their contemporaries, who might have competed, albeit unsuccessfully, with them in stature will have been wholly forgotten.

It seems that such gods are harder to come into being these days, and I think the Internet is a part of that and is likely to be so. The reason why is that bubbles get burst pretty easily, or at least do not grow so large, in an atmosphere in which criticism, comparison, and sometimes outright debunking happen almost instantly.

For example, in the case of Darwin, certainly Wallace and his proponents would have had much greater prominence in the conversation. Yes, Darwin was the better scientist and had done better research, but I think the position of Wallace would be much firmer. Plus, anyone else who had contributed anything to evolutionary theory would be online looking for credit.

Same thing with Einstein. Poincare’s and others’ contributions to relativity would be talked up more. Meanwhile, any flaw in anything Einstein had ever done could be picked at.

We can extrapolate this argument to other icons as well. Take Marilyn Monroe. I think it’s pretty obvious that the Internet has a demystifying effect. Whereas the post-War media constantly showed of Marilyn in a good light, making her look glamorous and desirable yet distant, today’s media would quickly have pics of her without makeup or in an unflattering outfit all over the place. Yes, in the 1950s, there were down and dirty mags like Confidential, and if you’ve ever taken a peek at their articles, like me you’ve probably been surprised at what they could get away with back then. Certainly such pubs played a demystifying role. I think the difference today is that the magnitude of the demystification is much greater, and the Internet can serve as a central clearing house for all facts and allegations. For example, if you look up a star’s Wikipedia article, the bad is in there with the good, especially if it can be substantiated.

At the same time, the Internet exacerbates the long tail effect, in which a great many things compete for our attention instead of a few. My bet is that, in 100 years, Marilyn will still be an icon because she achieved that status while she was alive (and the circumstances of her death only supported this), yet Gwyneth Paltrow will be not be an icon. The total number of words written about Gwyneth and photos taken of her are almost certainly greater than the respective numbers for Marilyn, yet that’s only because the market for such nonsense and the industry that feeds it have grown so large. Jennifer Aniston and George Clooney, however big they seem now, won’t be big names in the year 2062.

So also with bands. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones are unquestionably iconic, Madonna and U2 arguably so for the long term. Probably no new artist today will attain this status.

So, ultimately my argument is not really about whether these scientists and others deserved their status. My argument is that the social mechanisms that made such status possible are no longer in place. In fact, it can be argued, I think, that icons in any field have become extremely hard to create.

Thoughts?

2

Certainly the mechanisms of fame have changed in modern times, but part of the effect you’re describing is just that these are individuals to whom we attribute Very Big Ideas - and these Very Big Ideas are a non-renewable resource.

Nobody is going to discover a brand new theory of [something] that replaces evolution - a bit like nobody else is going to be the first man on the moon.

3

That is true. In a way, the people become the symbols of the Very Big Ideas. Thus, they are Very Big Symbols.

I would still say, however, that the next person to come up with a VBI (I assume that there are a few left) won’t get as much credit as a Darwin or an Einstein (for the reason mentioned above) and won’t become as big a symbol, so to speak.

4

Maybe, maybe not - I think that hinges on whether the VBI is just big, or is a game-changer. If something comes along that makes us start doing things differently, the person who kicked it off will be a big name.

5

We likely would have banned either of those two for trolling with their ‘crazy’ ideas and lack of cites.

6

I mean, we don’t revere Leibniz, or Euler, or Babbage, or Tycho Brahe, or any number of scientists that were famous once upon a time. We don’t revere Ben Jonson or Catullus or Samuel Richardson, even though they made significant developments in the field of literature. The further forward in time we go from the present, the fewer historical figures can occupy our collective namespace. I don’t believe that the internet will significantly hasten this process.

And as for the idea that no new scientific icons will be created, we have a new iconic scientist right now: Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Granted, he’s as iconic for his pithiness as for his scientific accomplishments, but still.

7

Stephen Hawking’s stature has not been diminished by the net, has it?

And Hawking couldn’t tie Einstein’s shoelaces as far as scientific creativity goes.

OP mentioned others as having contributed to Relativity, mentioning only (mathematician)
Poincare. I have read Poincare partially anticipated Special Relativity by postulating that the
speed of light might be a constant of Nature. However, neither he nor anyone else developed
the idea further, leaving it to Einstein alone to open the door wide and blaze the trail to the end.
It is also instructive that no contemporary claimed a right to share in Einstein’s achievement.

Later during the quest for for final equations of General Relativity another mathematician,
David Hilbert, was neck-and neck with Einstein late in the game, with Einstein barely completing
the task earlier for priority. It is fair to note that Hilbert got on the search bandwagon late,
and had the advantage of familiarity with the many years of work Einstein had put into it.

Popular literature on the subject unanimously informs us that the modern Holy Grail of theoretical
physics is a so-called Grand Unification theory, wherein gravity is comprehensively treated in combination
with the other three fundamental forces (electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear) now
described by the quantum mechanical Standard Model.

Were ONE man to discover the Grand Unification Theory the acheivement would be as worthy
of fame as Relativity, and the acclaim of the experts will carry the same weight with the informed
public as it did 1905-1919. That is what matters most.

On the other hand, it is probably as likely that GUT, if it is ever discovered, will be the work
of several researchers, somewhat as the discovery of Quantum Mechanics was. There preeminence
was speard much more thin than it was in the case of Relativity, possibly contributing to the
authors’ comparitive obscurity.

8

No doubt both of them would have had a sizable share of “Fag! LOLZ!” criticism.

9

It isn’t scientists that would have been diminished by the internet, it’s the proponents of revealed religion. Joseph Smith, Apostle Paul, Mohammed, even me…all would have been utterly exposed and destroyed by 4Channers and Anonymous and Snopes and Reddit and the Huffington Post.

Revealed religion depends on ignorance. Scientific progress depends on scrutiny and evidence. The information age has not made evolution or relativity go away, but many of the claims of revealed religion are now widely known to be un-historical or just plain false.

10

This has to be the best username/post combo I’ve seen in some time.

And accurate as well - which makes the irony that much better!

11

Trouble is, I don’t think it’s going to be one person. We haven’t really had a big-name inventor since Edison, since stuff is done by research institutions and companies now. And likewise with science: typically done by a bunch of people instead of just one.

But there is still room I think for a brilliant philosopher or scientist to make a big one-person contribution.

12

I think an important factor is that our predominant culture no longer reveres education/knowledge/science. Quite the opposite, in fact. Instead, here comes Honey Boo Boo.

13

My guess is that the hoi polloi is too busy with American Idol (ironically a quest to find someone worthy of the sort of note we’re discussing) to notice modern inventors such as Elon Musk or Dean Kamen?

14

How quickly people forget Steve Jobs.

15

No, because the internet is too recent.

As you go back further in the past, people and events either have a huge effect, or little to none at all.

Consider Hank Williams. In his day, he was just another country musician, even if a quite popular one. Now he is the foundation of just about all country music.

Or consider that as you go back far enough in time, any given human is either the ancestor of everyone on earth, or no one at all.

In a similar way, Einstein and Darwin are the ancestors of almost every piece of biology and modern physics. Even though they themselves didn’t create it all, their name is attached to it all.

There are famous scientists and philosophers today. But you don’t know who the Einsteins are yet. Just wait 100 years or so to find out.

16

Right, it’s amazing how many deep intellects we are ignoring at this point. I mean, the layman’s Men of Science Series pretty much comes down to Newton and Einstein. Classical composers: Beethoven and Mozart. And so on.

I do think the Internet hastens the process, however. It gives people a lot more to fill their brains with.

17

I would add Newton to the list of iconic legends of Science.

And the person who develops FTL travel will be iconic as well.

18

I think the Internet would just make such a person bigger. There were plenty of great scientists in the 19th century - Maxwell and Faraday for two - whose discoveries totally changed our lives. But Darwin and Einstein blew away accepted knowledge and had discoveries that could be more or less represented easily to the common person. I agree that someone finding a loophole that allowed FTL travel would be similar. Einstein became a household word in no small part because of the relatively new mass media. Think how big he would have been with the Internet.

19

No one’s forgotten him. They guy didn’t invent a single thing. He just made other people’s inventions saleable.

20

Will it be one person? I thought the lack of iconic scientists today was that science is done by teams, more than by individuals. The job is simply too darn big for any one mind to grapple with.

(With, of course, exceptions, such as Alvarez and the dinosaur-killing comet. And wasn’t he, too, the leader of a team?)