"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de groupe de 
discussion : 4be680e1@news.povray.org...
> Sure, science is still happening today. But name just *one* scientist 
> who's alive today who has done anything so world-alteringly significant 
> that almost every man, women and child in the Western world knows their 
> name.
A few ideas:

- A lot of the "science hero" worshipping in the mid-XIXth to mid-XXth 
century was somehow propagandistic. These were times where many countries 
were involved in nation-building (where non-controversial heroes were needed 
to provide national role models) or in pissing contests with other countries 
("MY science is better than YOUR science"). This does not diminish the 
merits of those scientists (Lyssenko notwithstanding) but part of the 
worship was artificially constructed. Note that the scientific hero has its 
dark side, the mad scientist, a cliché that is still pestering actual 
scientists today.
- Contemporary science is made by hundreds of thousands of small and large 
teams all over the world, each one working for long period of times on 
increasingly specialised fields. Singling out individuals is still possible 
(Nobel Prize) but much of the modern science is anonymous and just too 
abstract to make sense to the general public unless it's pretty (fractals, 
astronomy) or made controversial by non-scientific pressure (genetics, 
climate science).
- World-altering breakthroughs are harder to find today and progress seems 
more incremental.

G.

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