Slashdot Mirror
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 confess a lack of historical knowledge here, but wasn't Newton wealthy? wasn't he able to sit around and ponder great mathematical/physical questions because he didn't have to worry about a paycheck?
if that was the case, i think the real question is, how many independently wealthy people out there these days sit around and ponder the world? i can only think of Stephen Wolfram (of Mathematica fame) and Dean Kamen (dialysis, segway), but even they got wealthy and continue to make money by putting their eccentric thinking towards earning themselves money.
if the schizophrenic, homosexual, and sometimes just downright bizarre John Nash (forget what you saw in the overly romanticized movie 'A Beautiful Mind'), could maintain a presence in academia and eventually win the Nobel Prize for Economics, then it is likely that Sir Issac Newton could have held a position as a tenured professor.
although it must be asked: through what lens are we looking at when we say Sir Issac Newton was eccentric? sure he wrote stuff that may seem wierd today, like treatises that speculated on the geological location of Hell. but one must keep in mind that during his time, most scientists were actually "natural philosophers", who investigated matters of philosophy and religion, as well as pure science.
Newton did make most of his equipment himself, such as grinding his own lenses for Studies in Opticks. I doubt that he would be able to go that today.
-- I hereby announce, on behalf of my great ancester Oog, a retroactive patent on THE WHEEL.
Isaac Newton was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics which he started in 1669. This is the same Chair (sorry couldn't resist) that Stephen Hawking now occupies. I seriously doubt this position is for teaching classes. I've never met a PHD that wasn't eccentric!
Losers whine about doing their best
Winners go home and f*ck the prom queen!
We need a 10, RightOnTheMoney score for this post. I've watched over the past 5 years as requirements for just getting in the door have been increased faster than a NY stock exchange trader's blood pressure. Education is very important, but so is other traits. The more I hear about how companies "filter" people out, them more I want to form my own company. They don't "filter" a person because they aren't qualified. I've been told that if you don't have a 3.0 in college, you shouldn't show it off. But if you have a high GPA, like 3.7, 3.8, etc, then you had better show that are "well rounded" as well or else they won't want you! What BS is that?!?!?! I can be too good?!?! Do they think that only 1% of all graduates are good enough for their companies and the other 99% should be cutting hair or picking up trash?!?!?! Bah, I'm getting tired of this crap.
Space for rent, inquire within
Education is very important, but so is other traits.
Like the ability to properly conjugate "to be"!
I've been told that if you don't have a 3.0 in college, you shouldn't show it off. But if you have a high GPA, like 3.7, 3.8, etc, then you had better show that are "well rounded" as well or else they won't want you! What BS is that?!?!?! I can be too good?!?! Do they think that only 1% of all graduates are good enough for their companies and the other 99% should be cutting hair or picking up trash?!?!?! Bah, I'm getting tired of this crap.
A college degree, first and foremost, shows a willingness and dedication to bettering yourself, and to stick with something. It shows that you were willing to take at least 2-3 years to stick with something and educate yourself. That drive sets you apart from people that said "fuck it" when they could have hit the books.
A GPA less than 3.0 is average. You don't accentuate the average on a resume. You want to show what sets you apart from other people, so that's why you don't show a low GPA on a resume.
And well-rounded is important, too -- do you want to hire some "genius" with a 4.0 GPA that can't even communicate effictively with other human beings?
Besides that, resumes aren't what get you hired -- interviews are. Resumes are used to get the company interested, you basically show what sets you apart from everyone else. Then they bring you in to see if you're what they're looking for.
And honestly, so what if companies want the top 1% of graduates? If I ran my own company, I'd be trying to hire the best of the best. GPA isn't one of my criteria, but if that's someone else's, that's their prerogative.
It isn't helpful to get upset about hiring criteria; these companies are just trying to find excellent employees. You need to figure out why you are excellent, and show that to those companies in your resume.
evil adrian
I think if I'm getting hired for a job and I can communicate effectively that should be the basis I am hired for, not for if I give a great interview. An interview should not be a social occasion.
And if a genius with a 4.0 can't communicate effectively with other human beings, then he or she must have had some head trauma because you can't pass classes without communicating with your instructor via testing. A 4.0 says "I can communicate well by doing the work". Isn't that what you are hiring after all is a worker and not a new fishing buddy?
-------------------------------------
Technically, we are beyond survival.
A better niche for Newton in modern society would have been a research job at a national lab -- no teaching required, just research.
You also have to realize that the research world was a massive disaster back then. People didn't publish their results. There were no scientific journals. Newton invented calculus, found the laws of motion, and analyzed the motion of the planets. Then he sat on his discoveries for decades (and only eventually published the Principia because he wanted to build a claim that Leibniz and Hooke had taken ideas from him, rather than the other way around).
So let's not imagine a golden age when it was OK to be a socially nonconforming geek.
Find free books.
Speaking as someone who lives in Hollywood (where eccentricity is often tolerated entirely too much...), I'm not prepared to accept the assertion that intolerance to nonconformity is denying society the fruits of genius on a significant scale.
Sure, you're gonna find a "mad" genius or two, whose inability to fit into society leads to isolation, instutionalization or incarceration. And for every one of them you'll find at least a thousand just-plain-whackos. I daresay that we've "lost" more natural math geniuses to them being born as Kalahari Bushmen who never saw a zero in their whole lives, then to over-adherence to any collection of cultural mores.
The benefits of encouraging a certain level of - call it consistency - more than likely outweigh the detriments. Of course it can go too far; nobody would suggest that dressing a specific way be used as a criteria for hiring in an academic institution, for one example. But asking that the faculty generally refrain from habitually making up nonsense words in ordinary conversation, and that they bathe now and then and try to remember to at least WEAR clothes - I reckon that's a good thing.
Perfectly Normal Industries
Well, we all admire Newton for his physics and his mathematics. But you don't hear too many people praising his alchemy, his astrology, or his religous/apocalyptic histories. I imagine that his work in these latter three fields would tend to push him to the sidelines of academia. But, that doesn't mean he wouldn't get a position somewhere.
Logic, macros, and more
But most (if not ALL) modern university programs in technology require a lot of group projects, where individuals do get scored on performance in group settings. You can't get high grades if you can't perform well in groups. I know that at my university you can't even graduate unless you perform well on a group based senior design project. So, those 4.0 students MUST work well in groups, else they would be closer to 3.0 or 2.5.
Space for rent, inquire within
. 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 think the key word there is "hire". When you are hiring somebody, you are looking for some credentials to demonstrate that you aren't wasting your time/money hiring this person.
A founder, howeever, only has to convince himself he/she has the credentials. In all my years operating as a consultant in various capacities, I've never been seriously asked about my credentials. I've only been asked about expenses and timelines.
An interesting side-effect of being a consultant is that when your bid is accepted, you skip all the chains of command in most organizations and usually fit in somewheres near the top in the organizational heirarchy. In other words, people don't give you lip.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not need a college degree to be successful in the IT sector. You just won't do it with a "job"....
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
A university is not like grade school or high school. In general, most people attend the best school they can get in to and so there is going to be less of a disparity between your level of ability and the level of ability in your groupmates than in grade school/high school. I have had to work on several group projects, and have never had the problem of working with people "below" me. In other words, if you aren't going to a school where you can just slide by with a 4.0 without any thought, then it won't be much of a problem. And if you think you never get stuck with someone who is incomptent on a project in the working world, you are in for a huge suprise when it eventually happens.