General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThink of the brain power represented in this one image....
Imagine being a fly on the wall!Image taken at the 1927 Solvay Conference....
Cirque du So-What
(25,811 posts)has existed - either before or since.
TheKentuckian
(24,936 posts)but the output isn't so easily matched because there is less low hanging knowledge fruit now requiring greater technology and much more difficult work to build off that previous foundation?
I'm not saying that is the case but I do think it is more than possible that equal impact discoveries will take even more brains, utilizing much better tech to expand the limits of observation to move to the next levels.
We also cannot minimize the investment paradigm being different now, with less patience for investing that doesn't turn a corporate profit somehow even at the University level and that substantial funding most times will require corporate investment, which has to parlay quickly into profits soaking up the best a day brightest and forever limiting their horizons.
ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)and heresy if they had their druthers.
villager
(26,001 posts)If not more.
Cal33
(7,018 posts)Baitball Blogger
(46,573 posts)IDemo
(16,926 posts)but where the hell is his cat?
struggle4progress
(118,034 posts)IDemo
(16,926 posts)To me, there's just something uncertain remaining..
demwing
(16,916 posts)I think I just saw it...
YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)hobbit709
(41,694 posts)YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)Mira
(22,378 posts)ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)TheKentuckian
(24,936 posts)Capt.Rocky300
(1,005 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)He would get the brainometer needle into the negative zone!
Nevernose
(13,081 posts)That moron couldn't find his own asshole with a map and a tour guide.
MsLeopard
(1,265 posts)hfojvt
(37,573 posts)Did all that brain power provide any benefit to the human race?
Did they ultimately do any more good with their brains than the average firefigher does on an average Sunday?
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)Pretty much every single piece of medical technology - x-ray machines, EEGs, EKGs, CAT scanners, MRI scanners - relies on fundamental principles worked out by one of those present in the picture.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)greatly increase medical costs?
and from the Timetables of technology, it seems that many other people were working on X-Rays, like Roentgen in 1895, Pupin in 1896 and Cannon (from Prairie du Chien!!) in 1897.
Did Oldendorf and Cormack really rely on those "fundamental principles" and equations when inventing CT scans?
I think the technicians might have found a way anyway.
Plus, you know what you do when your Bohr model of the atom breaks down?
You call a quantum mechanic.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)did not contribute as meaningfully as an anonymous firefighter.
With respect at least to Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck, Schrodinger etc. such a claim is patently false.
erronis
(14,942 posts)I appreciate your attempt at humor but it would be hard to imagine the leaps of scientific advancement that happened without some of those brains being involved.
We'd be far better off from a medical expenditure standpoint if we just let people die of "natural" causes in their 30's or 40's. I don't know how old you are or hope to be, but I'd be long gone. Also the high medical costs of today's technologies become commodity costs (in my Candidian world.)
Perhaps it wasn't so much the individuals as the time (late 1800's/early 1900's) and the universities. Perhaps it was also the time when the world realized that it really could build incredible science experiments and weaponry.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)my ancestor Martin Honer for example, was born in 1649 and died in 1733, age 84. My patriarchal ancestor was born in 1705 and died in 1787, age 81.
Compares favorably to my classmate who had a heart attack at age 47.
whopis01
(3,467 posts)pnwmom
(108,925 posts)Technicians had been fixing broken bones for eons but they hadn't invented the physics and engineering principles that laid the foundation for the medical advances that followed.
NickB79
(19,111 posts)Medical technology beyond the microscope relies on their work.
EVERY piece of equipment we've put into space to explore the cosmos relies on their work.
Every energy source beyond 19th-century coal and oil burning (solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear reactors, etc) rely on their work.
And COMPUTERS! Their work laid the foundation for our understanding of advanced electronics that allow us to do things like post criticism of their work on DU.
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)...
Shivering Jemmy
(900 posts)Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)Response to hfojvt (Reply #14)
Post removed
Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)Millions of people (including even some average firefighters) use GPS devices, which are accurate only because the system, relying on Einstein's work, takes account of the relativistic effects on the clocks.
lpbk2713
(42,696 posts)they don't have any spiffy CinC cowboy boots.
?w=423&h=256
Mr.Bill
(24,103 posts)to experiment with crazy socks. Once you've worn blue socks with a tux, there's no turning back.
Kablooie
(18,571 posts)passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)That is a shame. All that missed potential.
SunSeeker
(51,367 posts)FarCenter
(19,429 posts)First rate woman physicists are exceedingly rare.
chrisstopher
(152 posts)About 5000 I Q points.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)And given the personalities of some, the collective IQ may be even lower.
Response to Playinghardball (Original post)
rumdude This message was self-deleted by its author.
Staph
(6,245 posts)at a dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners of the western hemisphere, on April 29, 1962.
"I want to welcome you to the White House. Mr. Lester Pearson informed me that a Canadian newspaperman said yesterday that this is the President's "Easter egghead roll on the White House lawn." I want to deny that!
"I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
"Someone once said that Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, and dance the minuet. Whatever he may have lacked, if he could have had his former colleague, Mr. Franklin, here we all would have been impressed."
calimary
(80,693 posts)these Greatest Minds in the Western World was talking about, together, was how slow the toilets flushed in the bathrooms at the hotel where they were all staying?
Just in a whimsical mood today.