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"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] dev null> 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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