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Science Since Babylon: Difference between revisions
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===Summary=== | ===Summary=== | ||
===Quotes=== | ===Quotes=== | ||
*"The most remarkable conclusion obtained from the data just considered is that the number of journals has grown exponentially rather than linearly. Instead of there being just so many new periodicals per year, the number has | |||
doubled every so many years. The constant involved is actually about fifteen years for a doubling, corresponding to | |||
a power of ten in fifty years and a factor of one thousand in a century and a half. In the three hundred years which separate us from the mid-seventeenth century, this represents a factor of one million. | |||
"One can be reasonably surprised that any accurate law holds over such a large factor of increase. Indeed, it is within the common experience that the law of exponential growth is too spectacular to be obeyed for very long. Large factors usually introduce some more-than-quantitative change that alters the process." p 169 | |||
*"Why should it be that journals appear to breed more journals at a rate proportional to their population at any one | |||
time instead of at any particular constant rate?" p 169 | |||
*"Thus, at any one time, about three doubling periodsâ worth of scientists are alive. Hence, some 8o to go per cent of all scientists that have ever been, are alive now. We might miss Newton and Aristotle, but happily most of the contributors are with us still!" p 176 | |||
*"Science in America is growing so as to double in only ten yearsâ it multiplies by eight in each successive doubling of all nonscientific things in our civilization. If you care to regard it this way, the density of science in our culture is quadrupling during each generation. | |||
"Alternatively, one can say that science has been growing so rapidly that all else, by comparison, has been almost stationary." p 177 | |||
*"It is indeed apparent that the process to which we have become accustomed during the past few centuries is not a permanent feature of our world. A process of growth so much more vigorous than any population explosion or economic inflation cannot continue indefinitely but must lead to an intrinsically larger catastrophe than either of these patently apparent dangers." p 182 | |||
*"To go beyond the bounds of absurdity, another couple of centuries of ânormalâ growth of science would give us dozens of scientists per man, woman, child, and dog of the world population." p 182 | |||
*"We must not expect such growth to continue, and we must not waste time and energy in seeking too many palliatives for an incurable process. In particular, it cannot be worth while sacrificing all else that humanity holds dear in order to allow science to grow unchecked for only one or two more doubling periods." p 186 | |||
===References=== | ===References=== | ||