Philosophy, Science and Age

Posted on July 5, 2010
Filed Under Philosophy, Science | 2 Comments

Over at the Splintered Mind there’s an interesting post on when scientists and philosophers produce their “great work.” (Yeah – it’s from a month ago: I’m behind on my reading) As Eric notes, Einstein famously quipped that “a person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so.” I don’t think that’s entirely true, but it is interesting seeing the ages of “big” production.

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The more interesting question is who the outliers are. That is who are the people doing their best work in their 50′s and 60′s?
I was going to say C. S. Peirce, but while I enjoy best his work from around 1893 – 1903 the fact is most of that is a refinement and progression of his early work. I suspect this is true of a lot of people who did great things in later life. Yes they did important work but it was an expansion of earlier work. (I’m here thinking of some of the work on the biology of memory – the name of the scientist escapes me at the moment)

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Comments

2 Responses to “Philosophy, Science and Age”
1 John Mansfield on July 7th, 2010 12:19 pm

Here’s a connecting article for you, Clark, about the aging of science:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/25/science

“In exploring the data more fully, Jones finds that the gains are not the result of people living longer, but generally of a decline in ‘great achievement’ in scientists’ 20s and 30s. ‘Peak productivity has increased by about 8 years, with the effect coming entirely from a collapse in productivity at young ages.’”

I wonder if the additional complexity of science – the many years learning what has already been discovered – has pushed back the age of discovery and perhaps even made new discoveries possible due to being past ones prime. (I’m here thinking more of physics than necessarily other disciplines)

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