[beloch]

The notion that established field leaders, like large trees, stifle the undergrowth of new ideas, is not new. It is a partially self-correcting problem. Leaders die. However, there's no telling what some of the undergrowth that sprouted at the wrong time might have grown into were it given more light. Asking how we can do better is worthwhile.

A worse problem manifests when fields come to be dominated and policed by a commonly accepted orthodox dogma.

A less controversial example might be the common perception in Physics during the late 19th century that all the big things had been sorted out, and what remained was to fill in increasingly small blanks. This was a terrible sort of dogma to grip an entire discipline since it actively encouraged ambitious new minds to look elsewhere for discovery. Who knows what discoveries might have been made earlier if this kind of fatigue hadn't gripped all of Physics?

Modern examples are bound to be more controversial. e.g. Anyone looking for a silver lining in climate change is going to run into outrage and difficulty getting publications or funding. However, common sense tells us that huge, complex changes to massively complex global systems are bound to be, themselves, complex and mixed. Of course there will be good aspects, and taking advantage of them may be the key to dealing with the bad. Just suggesting this is enough to make you a pariah in many circles though. What kind of valuable and beneficial work simply isn't being done because of this?

[Retric]

In many ways I think the common perception in the 19th century was essentially correct.

It’s easy to look back on people and think them fools, but the odds of a young student in 1830 making huge strides in Physics was tiny while many other fields where wide open.

[gmt2027]

Max Planck famously said science advances one funeral at a time. J. J. Thomson discovered the electron through his work on cathode rays in 1897. Up to that point the orthodoxy was that atoms were the smallest unit of matter. However there was evidence from the mid 19th century. What Thompson actually did was finally come up with incontrovertible experimental confirmation of a subatomic particle. The electron and other subatomic particles were the gateway to the rapid advance of 20th century physics.

The same pattern repeated itself in the early 20th century. Truly revolutionary ideas may take a generation to gain popular acceptance.

They had vacuum tubes in the 19th century, atomic theory and Maxwell's equations by the 1860s. I find it difficult to believe that they were incapable of isolating the electron.

[wolverine876]

> It is a partially self-correcting problem. Leaders die.

But the next people do the same. One major question that the younger generation doesn't ask is, 'how do I not repeat that mistake when I have power?'