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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."
Newton is rumored to have been an uber-asshole. An asshole among assholes. His main trait wasn't that he was eccentric, it was that he was an asshole to each and everyone he met.
It depends on the university and the department chair, but I'm willing to bet that you can find assholes in faculty at any given university.
So yes, Isaac Newton could probably have been hired on despite his assholeness.
The spectre of lawsuits arising from apples to the head would be enough to turn Sir Issac away at the door.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
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.
If anyone's interested, James Gleick recently released a wonderful biography of Sir Isaac. It's a very entertaining, very fast read.
Disclaimer: I've never read any other Newton biography, so I can't validate the accuracy. ;)
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
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.
John Nash was extremely eccentric but held down positions at MIT.
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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.
Eccentricity is ok, its the whole dead thing that might make it hard for him to get hired. Then again, with some of the braindead teachers I have had in the past, maybe not.
What do you mean you haven't published anything in over 300 years??
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Q: What would Isaac Newton be doing, if he were alive today?
A: Clawing at the lid of his coffin.
Breakfast served all day!
Ben Franklin would probably get arrested for flying a kite without a license.
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The focus of 'A Beautiful Mind' was NOT to document all of his bizarreness, but to demonstrate what schizophrenia could be like--and it did a decent job of it.
Having worked as a mental health associate in a residential treatment facility that primarily cares for schizophrenics, I think it important to point out a few things.
First, most schizophrenics are bizarre. By definition. Catatonic schizophrenics may not be, but bizarreness of thought is one of the requirements for diagnosis (source: DSM-IV revised). Thus to say that John Nash was sometimes bizarre is redundant. Of course he was.
Second, sexuality is unrelated to the discussion. Why bring it up?
Third, schizophrenia is a very debilitating disease. It is not easily overcome. If you think that the movie was overly romantic, consider this: two-thirds (approximately) of schizophrenics do not get better, regardless of treatment. It is very exceptional that someone with schizophrenia can learn to cope as well as Nash did. His story is exceptional, even if hollywood made it seem "cute" or whatever. I respect him for what he did. The movie, in terms of its treatment of what schizophrenics go through, did a good job of illustrating the nature of thier delusions, hallucinations and paranoia. IF ANYTHING IT UNDERSTATED IT!!!!!
Having worked with a man who truly believed his mother was a leprechaun, another who believed that he invented the Knight Rider car (but the government stole it, and made the show so they could kill his family and cover it all up) (he also believed that demons would throw "fury darts" at him, and that was why he attacked people), and another (blond) man who believed the devil was persecuting him becuase he had red hair, I have a lot of respect for those who manage to overcome this. I also feel that unless you have worked with these people, you cannot rightfully comment on their "bizarreness".
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As an aside (maybe a second rant), I also worked with some who were ADD/ADHD, and it is a strange thing. It is also mostly behavioral (I believe, some will argue), and is very rare outside the US. Ritalin should NEVER be given to children. If you know anything about medicine or psychology, consider this. The test group for Ritalin was adult humans and rats (sometimes different, sometimes not). There has NOT been any solid research on the long-term effects of Ritalin on young children. To generalize the results of studies on adults to children is a good example of bad statistics and medicine.
I know I haven't cited references like I should, but it is late.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
The evidence supports your theory: Newton died celibate.
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
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.
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