Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Why no new Einstein? New philosophy thread.

From the Race to Nowhere thread:


The question is "Why not?" It used to be that there were big breakthroughs every decade. What's so different now? Is it just that the problems are harder? Has something else changed?

It's hard to say that the problems are harder when you don't know the answers and are comparing to stuff that's already been solved. For example, the problems that Einstein solved were really thorny. By the mid-19th century, people knew that there were gaps in Newtonian physics: what the equations said and what the observations showed were different (e.g. the orbit of Mercury didn't fit the predictions of Newton's theory). But no one could figure out why. This was a very difficult problem and it was Einstein who figured it out. The answer was that space and time are a single continuum and that the curvature of spacetime affects gravity. This affects the motion of Mercury.

So I'm going to be agnostic on whether the problems are harder.

However, I do know that what's required for breakthroughs like Einstein's involve creativity and thoughtfulness (plus other stuff, like circumstances, being stubborn and a willingness to challenge dogma) in addition to a high IQ. See this article by a well-respected theoretical physicist for some ideas on the subject.

I've been thinking a lot recently about how the US school system and our university system de-emphasize creativity and thoughtfulness. This is in addition to the huge problem we have with low standards and over-focusing on low-achievers.

The K-12 system focuses on scores on multiple choice (MC) tests. STAR tests, Iowa tests, ERBs, SATs, MAP tests: they're ubiquitous. And they don't measure problem solving ability, synthesis of knowledge, ability to draw conclusions from different ideas, or creativity. The answer is always right in front of you, your goal is to get it an move on to the next problem fast, and if you don't know the answer, you have to eliminate the wrong answers, guess, and move on.

If ever there was an effective format for squashing creativity and thoughtfulness, a multiple choice test was it. Compare:

• "Jane Eyre's interest in Mr. Rochester changed when he a) lost a leg, b) lost his sight, c) divorced his wife, d) all of the above."
• "Compare the heroines in Jane Eyre and Madame Bovary. What were the primary circumstances or traits that formed their characters? How did these circumstances and traits affect what ultimately happened to them? Use examples from each novel to support your points."

Compare a test that gives you 54 MC questions and grid-in questions in 1 hour and 10 minutes (SAT math) with this test, which is a high school exit exam in mathematics in Ireland (but not the higher-level test; this one is called "Ordinary level."). Students must answer ~42 questions in 2.5 hours. For the higher-level test, check out the Honours level paper (~30 questions in 2.5 hours). Oh, and everyone takes TWO math exams at their chosen level, not just one. Honours English requires only 3 questions and one essay in nearly 3 hours. But you have to read and think.

The problem continues at the graduate school level, with the GRE math tests testing arithmetic (!) through geometry and no more. Even the math subject test relies on answering a lot of MC questions in a short period of time (66 in 170 minutes; google it). Again, you have to be able to answer the question quickly and move on to score well. No serious thought is required.

University hiring and tenure practices also rely on industrial metrics: number of publications and journal impact factors, number of grants and type (e.g. an NIH R01 has more prestige), number of clinical trials as PI, etc. They want people who can get lots of grants and churn out lots of papers. Finish and publish and move on! You should be submitting grant applications at every NIH deadline! Work all weekend if you have to! Just get it done! This stuff is important but it isn't everything.

The problem is that the tiger-science approach leaves no room for the creative thoughtful types who want to ponder a problem, find a new answer, and maybe create a new model (Grinity calls this way of thinking slow and deep). When we focus too much on work that derives from existing models ("normal science"), projects aimed at finding new models ("revolutionary science") can't get funded. They don't have enough preliminary data (because by the time they do, they aren't new ideas anymore). They're weird. They might not work out. Heaven forbid that something might not work out and we might not get an ROI (return on investment) on that project.

So the creative thoughtful intelligent types languish: they can't get an academic job or keep one (because you don't get tenure if you don't crank out lots of papers), the tiger-science way of thinking dominates academia...and everyone wonders why we haven't had a major breakthrough in theoretical physics since the 70s. It's because we've set things up that way. We are deliberately squandering our national creative and thoughtful talent in favor of impact factors.

Sorry, but the whole system is a mess. In putting so much of our emphasis on simplistic metrics like standardized test scores and journal impact factors, we've begun to discard creativity and thoughtfulness. Sure, we've made our schools and universities look "productive" in a narrow and industrially defined way, but ultimately, we'll run out of steam when the existing models get used up.

Thoughts? Thanks for reading this far.