Good counterpoints. I like your argument that over-specialization and funding incentives lead to narrow and siloed research. Perhaps the system is biased toward more depth and less breadth if you model knowledge that way? And if we suppose the two are interrelated, with breadth sometimes constraining depth and depth sometimes constraining breadth, the system is kind of stuck, isn't it?
> "Thus the issue of whether it is becoming harder or easier to understand everything that is understood depends on the overall balance between these two opposing effects of the growth of knowledge: the increasing breadth of our theories, and their increasing depth. Breadth makes it harder; depth makes it easier. One thesis of this book is that, slowly but surely, depth is winning. In other words, the proposition that I refused to believe as a child is indeed false, and practically the opposite is true. We are not heading away from a state but thowards it"
Good point I should make the breadth-over-optimization clearer.
Thanks for turning me onto Deutsch! I just read the chapter you quoted from — what a remarkable thinker! I guess it takes a physicist to articulate the deepest points of epistemology.
Good counterpoints. I like your argument that over-specialization and funding incentives lead to narrow and siloed research. Perhaps the system is biased toward more depth and less breadth if you model knowledge that way? And if we suppose the two are interrelated, with breadth sometimes constraining depth and depth sometimes constraining breadth, the system is kind of stuck, isn't it?
Exactly! David Deutsch wrote:
> "Thus the issue of whether it is becoming harder or easier to understand everything that is understood depends on the overall balance between these two opposing effects of the growth of knowledge: the increasing breadth of our theories, and their increasing depth. Breadth makes it harder; depth makes it easier. One thesis of this book is that, slowly but surely, depth is winning. In other words, the proposition that I refused to believe as a child is indeed false, and practically the opposite is true. We are not heading away from a state but thowards it"
Good point I should make the breadth-over-optimization clearer.
Thanks for turning me onto Deutsch! I just read the chapter you quoted from — what a remarkable thinker! I guess it takes a physicist to articulate the deepest points of epistemology.