Aspects of Scientific Advancement
Most scientific effort is spent trying to expand their fields. They work at the fringe, expanding knowledge and refining deep theoretical questions. Next come the engineers, taking the basic scientific knowledge and applying it, creating better tools and goods for people to use. Finally, and possibly most ignored are the teachers. Those who are responsible for passing on knowledge to the next generation. Without them, knowledge would die or be locked away in inaccessible tomes, effectively encrypted. If you think encryption is too strong a term, try reading specialist science journals - they may as well be in Navaho.
Scientific advancement from 10,000 BC through 1,600 AD was pretty basic by modern standards. You could teach someone pretty much everything worth learning in 20 or 30 years. By the 1800s, someone would have to focus on one or two fields to really learn everything there was to know in that field. By 1900, you had to specialize in a sub field, and now I think it is safe to say you have to be pretty darn specialized before you can say you know "everything" there is to know about an area of study. What does this imply for the future? In modern society, far more knowledge is produced than can realistically be learned by a large number of people.
There is still a large benefit from advancing the field. You could discover some new concept or technology that proves extremely useful. Engineers will always be needed to adapt the new technologies generated. However, the role of the teacher has taken on increasing importance as time goes one. Simplifiers and stream-liners of knowledge weren't all that useful in 1800 - there wasn't much knowledge to summarize. Today, there is so much knowledge that there are huge returns to society for those who are able to simplify and get to the essence of what is being said quickly without a lot of fluff. Pedagogy will become increasingly useful as time goes on, and it is the task that I have currently set myself toward solving. I see it as low hanging fruit in the economic world, since very few good economists spend a lot of time thinking about how to communicate the basic principles of economics quickly and effectively. Most people just draw pretty graphs and use advanced mathematics which confuse the poor 101 students. I also think that economics should be part of a foundational middle school or early high school education, along with basic personal finance, to help people structure the decisions they make later in life.
Scientific advancement from 10,000 BC through 1,600 AD was pretty basic by modern standards. You could teach someone pretty much everything worth learning in 20 or 30 years. By the 1800s, someone would have to focus on one or two fields to really learn everything there was to know in that field. By 1900, you had to specialize in a sub field, and now I think it is safe to say you have to be pretty darn specialized before you can say you know "everything" there is to know about an area of study. What does this imply for the future? In modern society, far more knowledge is produced than can realistically be learned by a large number of people.
There is still a large benefit from advancing the field. You could discover some new concept or technology that proves extremely useful. Engineers will always be needed to adapt the new technologies generated. However, the role of the teacher has taken on increasing importance as time goes one. Simplifiers and stream-liners of knowledge weren't all that useful in 1800 - there wasn't much knowledge to summarize. Today, there is so much knowledge that there are huge returns to society for those who are able to simplify and get to the essence of what is being said quickly without a lot of fluff. Pedagogy will become increasingly useful as time goes on, and it is the task that I have currently set myself toward solving. I see it as low hanging fruit in the economic world, since very few good economists spend a lot of time thinking about how to communicate the basic principles of economics quickly and effectively. Most people just draw pretty graphs and use advanced mathematics which confuse the poor 101 students. I also think that economics should be part of a foundational middle school or early high school education, along with basic personal finance, to help people structure the decisions they make later in life.