What hasn't been done and are there any visionaries left?

I love your thread, Vasa Croe. So much of what you’ve said, and the concerns you’ve expressed, strikes home to me. I often find myself asking the same questions you presented in the OP.

OK, first of all, I’m limiting this post to the area of science. I could also comment on other areas like music, social movements, politics, etc., but then the post would be even more painfully long.

I do think things have changed considerably since earlier periods we associate with human discovery and progress. What’s going on today, and the way we go about it, is not the same as in eras of the past like the Age of Enlightenment, the Renaissance, the Industrial Age, and the Progressive Era. I think our current era is often referred to as the Information Age. We’re currently in the midst of the Digital Revolution.

I think I look upon past times thru a lens filtered with shades of romanticism. When I think of intellectual giants like Sir Isaac Newton, or Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, in the 17th/18th centuries, or Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Bernhard Riemann in the 19th century, or the likes of Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, Ernest Rutherford, Richard Feynman, and Max Planck in the 20th century, I seem to place them in a special category apart from the today’s most well-known scientists like Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku, etc. In earlier times I think many of the great thinkers considered philosophical priciples and considerations to be of value when approaching problems in science and mathematics. It wasn’t until after quantum physics got into the swing of things that the “Shut up and calculate” method of doing science became acceptable.

Then, of course, the influences of government, the military and corporations on the scientific community became ever greater after the world wars. A great deal of today’s scientific effort and energy is tied up in government and corporate ventures. Most of our brightest minds today are occupied with solving problems involving business and military objectives. Academia today is overwhelmed by the publish or perish demon in order to procure adequate funding to survive; funding which comes from government and business interests. And so it becomes a viscious cycle, leaving few resources available to pursue pure science. In today’s world technological advancement, not scientific discovery, is the name of the game

And so, as gadgets have become our passion, it seems today we’ve come to idolize businessmen and corporate entities instead of pure scientists and great thinkers. Our most brilliant minds have been replaced by techie businessmen like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, and companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.

On the one hand I understand our obsessive preoccupation with technology. I’m fascinated by the latest innovations and have become accustomed to the frenetic pace of change. On the other hand, I can’t help but feel the dark forces that may be unleashed in the future as a result of our obsession today. I love hi-tech, but where it seems to be leading scares the hell out of me. As you eluded to in the OP, Vasa Croe, it may very well turn out that the technology we all love today will one day become the instrument of our demise.

I don’t know that we will ever return to a period of scientific renaissance as in the past. It will take more than any single individual’s uncanny insight into the working of nature to stir the passion of the masses. It seems science today is more and more reliant on the precision of our instruments than the genius of our scientists. Future discoveries will depend more on the power of our telescopes, microscopes, etc. to lead the way, not to speak of the contributions made by future A.I. Corporations and machines are taking over.

Frankly, I’m skeptical, but who knows? Hopefully I’m all wrong. There was just something magical about the old way to me.

Great thread, Vasa Croe. Thanks...