I was sitting in my calculus class when the teacher presents a simple looking ODE. After going through some discussion of how to handle solving the equation, he presents a certain condition and says If this is the case, it will take you five years of intensive thinking to solve and there is really no good strategy for approaching a problem of this nature. (or something along those lines). This got me thinking.... *insert slight change in conversational topic* People occupy the majority of their time at jobs or some other functions trying to earn salaries or wages that help them to sustain a living and be independent as a functional economic unit. But the time needed to do this is a LOT of time. Now, I say that the way our economy is structured is good for the majority of people. It gives them tasks to do, sometimes promotes critical thinking, and it has been shown that economies are pretty necessary to maintain an ordered society. But what about the very tiny fraction of people who are so extraordinary, who can think so deeply about higher mathematical or scientific concepts, that having to spend time doing tasks to earn money gets in the way of their thinking? I understand that grants and monetary awards are given to people to pursue higher level research, but that money is often scarce and not everybody gets the funding they need. It seems to me that the nature of our economy LIMITS progress that can be made in science and mathematics by forcing thinkers to basically waste their time doing things that are below them. Imagine the kinds of discoveries that could be achieved if people could just spend years working on very difficult problems without having to worry about making money to live. Now, this is a pretty broad approach in trying to talk about this topic and I just thought of it a few minutes ago, but I think it is interesting to think about nonetheless. Anyone have opinions on this matter?
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 15:01:18 +0000
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