Idly surfing the web, I came upon this story in the Washington Post about the discovery of
a so-called kilonova, the collision of two neutron stars one hundred thirty
million years ago. There are many exciting
details in the story, including the news that the observations confirm a claim
made by Albert Einstein a century ago about gravitational waves. But what really caught my eye was the fact
that the scholarly article announcing the discovery listed roughly 3,500
authors! The work was a world-wide
collaboration, involving not only huge multi-million dollar arrays of equipment
but enough scientists to staff the STEM departments of a dozen universities.
I thought of my tea with Bertrand Russell sixty-three years
ago. He had been reported as saying
that, had he to do it all over again, he would not have chosen philosophy as
his field. I asked him what he would
have chosen, and he said unhesitatingly, Physics.
This is where the forefronts of knowledge are, here and in
Molecular Biology. The era of the research
team in a laboratory headed by a senior scientist has given way to an entirely
new stage of scientific development, one in which thousands collaborate.
I wish I were young enough to see how this will all play
out.
2 comments:
Experimental particle physics has operated the same way for years. The LHC at CERN is an obvious example.
But philosophy isn't without its collaborative accomplishments, facilitated and amplified by the Internet. Philosophical scolding projects often involve hundreds of philosophers and allied academics alleging some harm or other. While the publications of these groups generally aren't peer-reviewed, their targets often are.
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