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Could Isaac Newton Get a Faculty Job?
An anonymous reader writes "Could Isaac Newton get a faculty job, or is modern society too intolerant of eccentricity? That's one of the questions that Glenn Reynolds asks Neal Stephenson in this interview over at TechCentralstation. Others involve the changing nature of fame in an age of fragmented media, the role of the Seventeenth Century in shaping the modern world, and what it's like to write a book with a fountain pen, in the twenty-first century."
I don't think he could get a job, but if he already had one, he could definetely get tenure.
His eccentricity would no doubt have been diagnosed as ADD or ADHD. He would have been drugged with narcotics and told to behave himself.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
This isn't just science. How many major computer companies were founded by people who never even finished college? Dell, Microsoft, Apple, and so on, these are all companies that would never hire their own founders considering them unqualified. I'm reasonably certain that this problem persists in other industries as well.
Don't kid yourselves. Politics is part of the process and I don't mean personal politics. I mean political positions on things like school choice, regulation of the economy, etc.
The question is: would Newton be smart enough to keep his mouth shut?
He would have to stay off the blacklist.
Could Isaac Newton get a faculty job, or is modern society too intolerant of eccentricity?
Modern society might be, and often for good reason, but if there's any place where eccentricity is tolerated, or promoted even, it's academia. I often think that many of the professors are purposefully eccentric. It's almost become something expected of the truly gifted, and many fraudulently flaunt their own eccentricity for the express purpose of making others think they are gifted. They've heard too many stores about Einstein, Turing, and Newton and get delusions of grandeur.
The fact is, most Universities won't care if you wear your underwear outside of your pants if you manage to do something truly brilliant. You won't be hired to teach, you'll be hired simply so the University can advertise that you're on staff.
Sorry to say, I'm not kidding...
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The university system is one of the last havens of eccentricity. It's full of eccentrics. To claim otherwise bespeaks an ignorance of university culture.
"Normal" people end up in investment banking, consulting, or corporate law where there truly is no room for eccentrics.
Even what is left of his now fully decomposed bag of bones would smell better than most of the professors I had while getting my Electrical Engineering degree.
Survive college and graduate school. He'd need to get into a decent college which really isn't too bad for most people of intellect. He would then need to be selected for graduate school. Given the meat grinder that that process is, based on test scores and "refernce letters (aka who blows^H^H^H^H^H knows who system" chances are fair he'd probably end up at a non-prestigous school (strike 1!).
Then he'd have to survive the meat grinder of grad school itself. Sucking up to professors, jumping through artificial test hoops, begging, and whoring himself for assistantships. Upon completing his thesis hope he hasn't pissed off his professor (oops--Isaac you left to go to theology studies on Sunday mornings, no recommendation for you, you could have spent that time developing quantum gravity instead of regular gravity, and if you really applied yourself you could have had quantum relatavistic gravity.....) Strike 2.
Hey Isaac! You've just earned your degree after earning ~15K for 6 years at a "part-time" job where you worked 80+ hours per week. Now in exchange for a double of your pay raise--you can take a temporary (2-year) job as a post-doc and be expected to work even harder, longer hours. No need to thank us. (strike 3!)
Now Dr. Newton needs a professor ship and he's got between 1-3 strikes against him.
I think Issac may have been like many (but not all) science Ph.Ds and took the money and run... (pssst buddy--check this out--For 80 to 100Gs, I'll give you 2 days off a week, PAID vacation, and I'll even let you see the sun sometimes. While we're at it--take some stock, have some decent health care. All ya gotta do is sell your soul to the Devil "aka The Man, aka Industry"
Issac thinks a minute......
Fsck Hooke and Liebonitz! (I never could spell his name--lousy scum). I'm takin my vacation at Disneyland (PAID)!
Yeah I'm a too little negative on the system after going thru it (my therapist says its good to vent my anger)--but it weeds out far too many good people with the bad. People who instead of working stupifying hours chose that thing called a family (yes even geeks finds Sig. others) or sleeping at night. Add to that the buracracy of gettin hired as a prof and the whole tenure inbred system. Is it anywonder that our Univeristies are populated with psychotic misifts with the social skills of Hitler?
Cthulhu for president!
Two words:
Principia Mathematica.
There has never been a more significant scientific publication.
If you published something that important, you could find an appointment just about anywhere...even if you were purple and lived off of pop-rocks.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
he was an asshole in respect to those times. What would get you considered to be an asshole even 20 years ago is acceptble today.
Don't forget, Christmas is coming, and I check my list twice!
IF Isaac Newton lived today he could probably get an academic job in England or the U.S. At least if he published something truly brilliant first and then applied for a job.
... OK, more nuts) with all the time he would be obliged to waste massaging students' egos, marking student assignments and attending teaching skills courses.
IF Isaac Newton lived today and took a job in within the English university system he would go nuts (well
IF Isaac Newton lived today and got an academic job he would quit academe quick smart and get a job in the financial sector, earn a decent amount of money and do research just for fun.
The liver is evil and must be punished.
If you think you want only the top 1% to work at your company, you shouldn't create a company. What matters much more than credentials, to create a succesful company, is the ability of the employee to work in a team, and to meet goals - and to overcome obstacles. Far to many of the recent top 1% lack this ability - and this is ofthen the most important. Besides, there's only a finite group of companies that can hire the top 1%, or 10%, or whatever%
Well orcourse in Newton's day those were perfectly normal things for him to be wokring on. Even if we do think them a bit weird today.
It should also be noted that he did not use a fountin pen, as it was not invented until the 19th century. He used a dip pen, probably a goose quill. They are still used in some places. If done well its amazing to watch.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
It seems there is something missing today in much of communication, and I am guilty of contributing to this, as I'm sure are many of you. Email, telephone, and perhaps worst of all: chat rooms. All of these things contribute to the attitude of raking our discourse in the mud; we treat it as so common and vulgar, as though it is an ugly tool not an art. We must all take an active role in preserving and promoting that grand and noble thing which is rational dialogue between two human persons.
Very few of us have the opportunity to particpate in, for example, discourse through publishing scholarly papers, and even for those who do, the whole processes is necessarily exclusive.
I believe that manual letter writing is perhaps the most rewarding means of communication. Yes, manual letter writing: that thing people do with a real pen and real dead-tree paper, like your mother and aunts and grandmothers did and, if living, probably still do. Our mothers do more to promote an atmosphere affirming the dignity of human dicourse than probably do many of us!
every letter has a greater sense of importance - It could be weeks before you receive a reply, and how the world can change in that time; the letter is an occasion to "put on your best suit and use your finest china", as it were.
it is deliberate - You might take a week to ponder and absorb the thoughts of your interlocutor before evening sitting down to write. Writing your response - what must suffice as the only communication between the two of you for perhaps weeks or more - is a task for more than even a single evening. This is no 30 word email that you bang out in as many seconds.
it necessitates greater attention to quality and clarity - This is a grand occasion. If you do not put forth your best effort, you will regret it immediately. How many of you have thought to yourselves, "I should have said that instead?" Here there is no recourse. You can not call up your acquaintance and offer a clarification or warning before it is read; you can not send off a follow-up email to explain yourself that evening.
it provides for cooler heads - You may be steaming-mad now, but consider how horrible you will feel in many days or even weeks when you receive a reply. Oh, how foolish you will feel when you must read your brash and irrational words quoted to you then!
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
To be honest, given the current environment, I have my doubts that Richard Feynmann would get tenure at the moment especially inhis younger years.
See my journal, I write things there
two things:
firstly, bipolar disorder isn't genetic as far as we can tell.
secondly: we have enough trouble successfully diagnosing that condition today with biographers trying to retroactively diagnose dead people with it.
lysergically yours
Newton was a devout Christian and a creationist. That doesn't play well in the modern scientific community, where atheism and agnosticism are the ruling ideologies. If Isaac Newton were applying for a university job today, he would be treated with disdain. From this biography:
He loved God and believed God's Word-- all of it. He wrote, 'I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily'. He also wrote, 'Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance'.