I have long thought that it is worthwhile reading old and really old science articles, to learn the historical context of a field, to gain some insight into the importance and development of the ideas and perhaps to pick up a worthwhile suggestion for a line of inquiry.
One could say, as a blogger Katja Grace does (https://meteuphoric.com/2017/01/04/why-read-old-philosophy/) that (my paraphrase) a newer contemporary account by someone with both writing and pedagogical skills exceeding that of the originator of the ideas conveys information better and without the misguided notions that may have accompanied (and perhaps cluttered) the original article.
In the September 2017 Physics Today Raymond Goldstein argues that one can learn from old science: Coffee stains, cell receptors and time crystals: Lessons from the old literature. He gives several examples.
What are your views?
It is the best way to understand the history of ideas and the forces that bring about change. It also enables us to see that ideas only gain our attention when other technological, ideological and intellectual ideas are in place to support them. When you think an idea is new, just check out the history of various intellectual traditions and you will generally find it has already been discussed at length but has been shelved or discarded because conditions were not right. Scientia (science) originally just meant wisdom - reading history provides so many fascinating insights.
It goes without saying that every serious and fair scientist reads the historical sources of his subject and his subjects as completely as possible and then quotes them. Unfortunately, especially some of the younger ones choose the easy way of ignorance. The experienced carry the inexperienced on their shoulders. The inexperienced rise to the shoulders of the experienced, that's how it works.
Dear Robert Shour
It is also possible that the phenomenology hypothesized was not able to be investigated with the equipment at the time (e.g. w/o computer assisted analysis and eye tracking). This is the case for my thiry-three year old paper, "A Human Ethogram ... ", a major paper in behavioral and cognitive science: ( Article A Human Ethogram: Its Scientific Acceptability and Importanc...
)That paper hypothesizes the importance of, and sufficiency of, perceptual shifts as the start of each new hierarchical stage of cognitive development (at the inception). IN RECENT WRITINGS OF THE LAST 2 YEARS, the wrongful nature of existing theories and the justification for the Ethogram Theory have been clearly laid out. PLUS, specific, clear concrete hypotheses of what one should see at key times in cognitive development have been stated; these hypotheses are very testable (verifiable/falsifiable) and state what should be able to be seen in direct observation of the overt behavior of the subject (and, these being clearly new behavior patterns). (Eye-tracking technology, etc. may well need to be involved). SEE:
Book NOW the nearly complete collection of essays (RIGHT HERE) _B...
and the paper containing nearly all new essays on the topic (twice as long as the collection above):https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brad_Jesness2/project/Human-Ethology-and-Development-Ethogram-Theory/attachment/5b90a3603843b0067537fdac/AS:667524777664512@1536161717284/download/allCopyable.doc?context=ProjectUpdatesLog
Have you ever seen the children's game where they pass a secret around the room from child to child? Then they compare the answer at the end to what was said at first. It is usually distorted or incomplete. While I agree somewhat with Matthew that newer is often better, our knowledge is not based on thoughts that come out of thin air. There is always a foundation of basic knowledge that we make our basic assumptions on as we move forward in our research. That is why I require my students to go to the original source for information. That way they get the author's view and not just someone else's interpretation of what was said.
Actually I read the original papers on Quantum Mechanics but did not gain insight from it because those ideas had not crystallised out. Therefore I prefer more up-to-date textbooks
Aim collecting science relevant published information for future generations to come , oldest books dating back 2000 years . Whery intresting Redding's
Except a few iconic articles of every field, it is preferable to go for reading review articles for history and further read the recent one (past 10-15 years).
'As time is limited invest it wisely.'
Dear Robert Shour,
It depends on the subject, area of interest.
But old paper will provide you fundamental and roots of the research area.
Historical context can help understsnding of how science and theory develop but cannot comment on whether it helps contemporary scientific research. Have met scientists and others who only started investigating the history of their subject after retirement
There is a question on quora that is similar; https://www.quora.com/Should-I-feel-bad-for-reading-old-science-books. There are likely many examples of ideas raised long ago that, when considered in current times, become important. There is a long gap time between Aristarchus and Copernicus who considered the idea of a heliocentric model for the Earth and planets. Atomism as a concept arose with Leucippus and Democritus, long before its modern reincarnation. This question about old and very old science can be addressed by giving examples, as in the September 2017 Physics Today Raymond Goldstein article mentioned in the question. An article I posted on RG could be considered another example of an old article (by Clausius, 1860) turning out to have modern relevance: Working Paper Clausius’s 1860 article on mean path lengths
. (The gist of the article is that Clausius's article anticipated some questions in modern cosmology.)There are probably many examples of old and very old science giving clues (perhaps significant clues) to modern scientific questions. And, as observed by the various preceding replies, there are lots of other reasons to read old and very old science.
This is a comment on the statement in a reply above: Once a field is written in an established text book, it is already too sterile and sanitized.
There is something to the idea that a concise recapitulation of ideas in a modern text book is a more time efficient way of becoming acquainted with the intellectual landscape (as it were) in a given field of scientific inquiry. On the other hand consider this analogy. There is an open field of wild vegetation and trees. Walking through it on a straight line of level paving stones makes traversing the length of the field more efficient. But walking through an untended dirt path, or perhaps walking with no path available, in a way that weaves through the fields and trees, gives the perambulator more of a sense of the original encounter and exploration of the field, and the hurdles that would be necessary to make the field more accessible.
The established text book is analogous to the straight sidewalk. Faster but sometimes it gives less of the original experience. And sometimes, the original experience has been omitted (a "sterilized" account). All the bumps that make the problem interesting are omitted on the straight sidewalk (a "sanitized" account).
I find this discussion very abstract
Can any of the repliers give a concrete example of an old study that helped him/her in the research?
Dr. ten Brink:
The September 2017 Physics Today Raymond Goldstein gives several examples of how old physics played a role in research.
The 1860 Clausius paper that found (when interpreted in an updated way, in effect) that distances in a 3 dim space are 4/3 those in 4 dim space might explain dark energy: Working Paper Clausius’s 1860 article on mean path lengths
Updating the 1838 Sarrus and Rameaux paper on metabolic scaling from their use of 3 and 2 dim to 4 and 3 dim seems to account for Kleiber's Law :
Preprint Metabolic scaling's exponent
Generalizing Sarrus and Rameaux suggests there is a principle of dimensional capacity
Preprint Dimensional capacity: the Sarrus-Rameaux Principle
Going much further back: Ptolemy used Babylonian astronomical observations (among other old observations) probably hundreds of years old in the Almagest. Mendel's pea studies were obscure until rediscovered by de Vries and Correns. In mathematics, Hilbert's 23 problems continue to motivate mathematics.
Use of old science itself likely has a long history.
Bob Shour
Reading old sciences books in entomology and the social sciences I found instances where newer researchers were repeating some of these same ideas.(Debugging the Link Between Social Theory and Social Insects). So, I think reading old science books and articles in a subfield might help people to see what has already been tried or discussed in the field. It may help to connect the new ideas then to the older ones to show the continuity in the field.
we can learn or unlearn a few things every time . My suggestion would be breeze through the paper once atleast to know the background. Regarding test results ,data etc I personally go back upto 5 years as they are more relevant
Interesting question and interesting replies.
I guess primary resources have their uniqueness and value at some stage, right?
No doubt that up-to-date resources are necessary too, though.
It also depends on the case, I believe.
Researchers on philosophy or science history, might find interest in such articles.
For what is worth, I have recently referred to Blooms original taxinomy of the 1950s in a research work (might relate to the question).
Why 'Old Physics' Still Matters by Chad Orzel is an article on Forbes.com website, dated July 30, 2018.
At pages 77 - 78 of their book, The Evolution of Physics, by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, published in 1938,
"We must examine old ideas, old theories, although they belong to the past, for this is the only way to understand the importance of the new ones and the extent of their validity."
I posted this question October 8, 2018.
After that, I was wondering about dark energy, expanding cosmological space and 3/4 metabolic scaling, and how scaling applies in those different contexts.
But scaling is induced by dimension. So I read over parts of Galileo's Two New Sciences about how scaling affects the strength of materials and beams, looking for help in adapting a scaling perspective to a more fundamental dimensional perspective. That raised questions. Why did Galileo use a scaling perspective? (I think the answer is that a scaling perspective was sufficient for his purposes.) And what happens if one switches from a conceptual reference frame based on scaling induced by dimension to, more fundamentally, a conceptual reference frame based on dimension? That switch in conceptual reference frames led to the idea of the principle of dimensional capacity.
If the principle of dimensional capacity is fundamental and was not expressly part of physics at 2019 (nor is it now in 2020), but still, if it is fundamental, as I believe it is, then this is an example of how old physics helps with a modern problem, in particular accounting for the 1998 astronomical observations which have since then until now (April 2020) been attributed to dark energy.
Die Abhängigkeit des Hirngewichtes von dem Körpergewicht und den geistigen Fähigkeiten is an 1892 article by Otto Snell proposing mammalian brain weight scaling relative to body weight. Being over 100 years ago, it should qualify as an old science article.
I translated it into English in early January 2020 at Preprint Otto Snell's 1892 Hirngewichtes von dem Körpergewicht, trans...
because it seems to be an important article and there was no English translation.
After reading it translated, I conclude it is important for several reasons.
Wikipedia credits Snell's 1892 article as being a founding article for allometry. That assertion may be doubted in view of the article 54 years before that in 1838, in French, that was a report on the ideas of Sarrus and Rameaux about scaling of mammalian respiratory rates, which I finished translating in 2017,
Article Sarrus and Rameaux, 1838, translated into English
.Snell 1892 does not mention Sarrus and Rameaux 1838. But both articles relate scaling to animal surface area, interesting, at least, historically.
More importantly, Otto Snell's 1892 article discusses as a problem brain weight scaling, and as of the end of 2020 that problem was still outstanding. Interestingly, the same physical principles that appear to resolve the problem of accounting for metabolic scaling (a problem derived from the work of Sarrus and Rameaux 1838) might resolve brain weight scaling, an approach I have just sketched in
Preprint Scaling principle of brain weight and metabolism
Regardless of the validity of the suggestions in this last article, reading old science articles proved to be interesting and perhaps even fruitful --- leading to some new ideas.
Steven Johnson (2010), Where Good Ideas Come From, p. 28:
" ... somehow seeing over the detritus of old ideas and ossified tradition. But ideas are works of bricolage; they’re built out of that detritus. We take the ideas we’ve inherited or that we’ve stumbled across and we jigger them together into some new shape.”
Robert Shour Some of the problems of reading current literature are the heavy use of jargon, acronyms, and a very noticeable lack of spelling out the problem that the paper is trying to solve. It is as if everybody knows so why go over it again.
We seem to have a complete lack of history as well, let's cite one old zombie theory that came back to life when butterflies changed color to reflect the industrial revolution and pollution on the bark of trees. Don't know which one? The survival of the fittest, Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species was moribund. In his last revised edition, Darwin even implied that Lemarcism might have merit. Imagine you revisited Darwin just before his resurgence. Talk about finding gold in a scrap heap.
Come to think of it I have an example of what Diane M. Rodgers was saying. I am going to cite a phase change that occurred in peptic ulcers when Barry Marshall, together with Robin Warren, discovered that the spiral bacteria H. Pylori was the cause in 1984. A quick cure of Bismuth and antibiotics cured almost all cases. But if you go to google scholar's advanced search box (far more limited than before)
https://scholar.google.com/#d=gs_asd
and return articles ____ to ______
so the key phrase is peptic ulcers from say 1960 to 1983
you can actually read what medical experts thought were the causes and the results run the gamut from personality, stress-related, spicy foods, multifactoral, or genetic. Sure it is easy to laugh at someone trying to use psychology to change a type A personality to cure their ulcers, but how many diseases today are explained away by multifactorial, genetic, or stress-related. Which are basically synonyms for we really have no idea what causes them. And removes some impetus to find the real cause Even awarding the Nobel prize to doctors Marshall & Warren masked the great scientific mystery: why did H. pylori change its comportment in the 1950s?
just a note to Vadim S. Gorshkov
I like to see how science changes over time too. Have you ever used the ngram viewer to see how a word: microchip or phrase data mining enter the language and evolve over time? https://books.google.com/ngramsworks by scanning google books and correlates publishing date and frequency
pretty cool
cgy
Christopher Gerard Yukna.
On your May 11, 2021 mention of https://books.google.com/ngrams: yes, very cool to learn about this.
I searched glottochronology on ngram, which I thought dated from Swadesh, and there seem to be earlier usages. After the usage graph is displayed, year ranges display underneath, which link the source books. Also, ngram might help track down the provenance of concepts, including old and really old ones, to which the original question pertains.
Thank you for passing on this information.
Bob Shour
If I take for example my study about the origin of Gauls, old studies mentioning an origin from Pamir, Hindu Kush or Altai and Dravidian migrations are corroborated by recent genetic, linguistic and archaeological studies, so it is also worth reading old studies.
Vadim S. Gorshkov
right words "graphene" and "single layer graphite" are much better examples. And getting a Nobel for playing with scotch tape is awesome. (I know they did more as Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov often tell journalists)
I don't know if a lot of you will be interested, but I am going to mention my studying Ernest Rutherford's papers and history because Robert Shour is interested in physics. One hundred years ago, Rutherford postulated the existence of electrons inside the nucleus of the atom and called this fused entity a neutron. Over the years he was dissuaded from this conjecture by his colleagues. When his colleague and fellow member of Cavendish labs James Chadwick proved the existence of the neutron in 1932 and as all particle physicists do won a Nobel. Well, Rutherford could not know that free neutron decay discovered in the 1950s: decays into an electron, proton, and energy nor did he know the recent discovery that lightning fuses electrons and protons into neutrons. What would he have theorized then? How would nuclear physics have proceeded if Rutherford had pursued his idea of electrons in the nucleus? Two short presentations were produced already and a paper is in the works. Hope you like them
Presentation The Rutherford Conjecture, Why the Taijitu symbol better rep...
Presentation How Muons Further Illustrate the Rutherford Conjecture
I posted the question in this discussion October 18, 2018. The arrival of the epidemic extended some of my reading after 2019 to some history about disease and pandemics.
David M. Oshinsky’s 2005 book, Polio, An American Story, includes an old mostly discarded vaccine approach being revived.
In the early 1950s, Jonas Salk promoted a killed virus vaccine arguing its safety. His scientific rival, the eminent academic Sabin promoted his attenuated live virus vaccine because it resulted in a more robust immune response. Sabin with impressive academic credentials denigrated Salk’s vaccine. The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (The March of Dimes), looking for a dramatic success, supported Salk's work because it was likely to be ready faster. In 1955, it was, and the US adopted it.
Unfortunately one (only one) of the Salk vaccine manufacturers Cutter (later bought by Bayer) took insufficient care (vats of killed and live virus in the same room ) leading to some paralyzed children and some deaths (known as the Cutter incident). Academics, the National Academy of Science (Sabin was admitted 1951, Salk was not invited), the AMA, the NIH, and finally the US government favored the Sabin vaccine (and Sabin), and the Sabin vaccine in 1960 replaced the disgraced Salk vaccine in the US. Salk died in 1995.
But Sabin’s attenuated vaccine sometimes caused polio whereas the Salk vaccine with proper manufacturing safety protocols never did. From Oshinksy: "In 2000, the CDC endorsed a full return to the Salk vaccine in the United States, recommending that the Sabin vaccine be used only in special cases—among children, for example, who were visiting parts of the world where a polio outbreak was in progress." (P. 279).
Old science revived.
Yes, it is worthwhile reading old and really old science articles.
A detailed understanding of the theory may sometimes require reading original scientific articles. For example, in an article last year, I cited an article from 1956 to better assume my work. In addition, in another article, I need to cite the 1903 article. I had no choice but to cite such an ancient scientific article. Researchers involved in studying the optical properties of thin films often use the relational expressions in Tauc's 1966 article.
At the same time, reading contemporary articles is also valuable for understanding the current status/progress of the personal research field.
Thanks.
Dear Robert Shour thank you for your interesting technical question. In our field of research, chemistry, it is absolutely worthwhile reading old and even very old scientific literature. I do this regularly. Quite a few very interesting chemical compounds reported in the 19th or early 20th century have not yet been characterized by modern techniques such as single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Thus there are numerous "hidden gems" in the old chemical literature, and quite often you get interesting new ideas when reading such articles. One of the most traditional chemical journals, "Liebigs Annalen der Chemie" (today "European Journal of Organic Chemistry") first appeared back in the year 1832!
Dear Robert Shour P.S. Let me give you an example from our work how very old work can initiate new research. Cited below is one of our most recent papers. The title compounds were first reported in the 19th century, and the oldest reference in the article is from 1863. Base on this old work we have done exciting new research in that we determined the very interesting crystal structures of these compounds for the first time. It can really pay off reading old research articles!
Synthesis and Structural Investigation of a Complete Series of Brightly Colored Alkali Metal 1,3-Dimethylviolurates
Article Synthesis and Structural Investigation of a Complete Series ...
This article is freely vaialable as public full text on RG.
Sure. Old fundings can be used recently and in future. Recent findings depent completely on old findings.
Even in 2021 I am glad to refer some papers from the 1970s, 1980s, and even 1940s:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2021.672592/full
Why not? If it is necessary for understanding the topic, we can cite anything, and it is completely Ok.
Artur Brown.
Thank you for your reply. I agree with the sentiment in your answer "You learn way more ...", often true.
Incidentally, Your [10] reference reminds me of Gamow's article: Brittin, W. & Gamow, G. Negative entropy and photosynthesis P Natl Acad Sci USA, 1961, 47, 724-727 (an old article).
Actually, that´s a good question. And the answer depends on many different things. To put it shortly, yes, for the most part yes, if we are talking about social sciences. If we´re talking about natural sciences, less so, but still, it will depend on the nature of the object of study. There are old papers and books that still provide good insights. It is entirely possible that on one topic there was some work done in the past and it was relatively abandoned. In that case, any new work will have to rely on old papers.And definitely the history of particular theory or field may be relevant in many ways.
This also means that the idea that must have x percentage of your sources published in the last 3 or 5 years (often a requirement for dissertations) is inadequate at best, foolish at worst. And the fact that someone´s work may be evaluated to some extent based on how old or new his or her references are is utterly wrong.
I like old papers. Not only from a historical point of view, but emotionally and aesthetically too. Indeed, in the time when science and publishing were not such a business, any paper was addressed to readers in attempt to share some important results or useful methods.
Dennis adds something important: the impact of business. Knowledge has been commodified, and has become a factir of production. Also, webmetric evaluation of scientific production, the impact of rankings on universities, all that have created a pervasive culture in which bias towards recent publication is a correlate of the "publish or perish" directive.
Reading a very old article can have many advantages, most of which the other researchers already mentioned. I would like to mention one extra benefit (I hope it is not regarded as a kind of repetition of other answers).
Old scientific papers are good lessons for us, when we see what they could achieve in those old times with their limited available/reachable resources and technical abilities/facilities (compared to today's rich & reachable resources and high technology).
I have always been impressed by those old works/books/papers.
Best regards...
This question: Is it worthwhile reading old and really old science articles? with link: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_it_worthwhile_reading_old_and_really_old_science_articles
started October 8, 2018, and still is interesting to me, as are many of the replies. Here I highlight one answer, which prompts another, related, discussion.
Vadim S. Gorshkov added a reply October 9, 2018. Part of his answer relates to how old some of his references are. Then he writes: “My personal record is 1872 (this work was digitized !!!).”
This suggests a related question:
Have you ever used as references, in articles you wrote, old or really old articles?
Which I have today posted:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Have_you_ever_used_as_references_in_articles_you_wrote_old_or_really_old_articles
Wilczek, Frank. Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality (2021) (at p. 219). Penguin Publishing Group:
I often go back to Plato, to Saint Augustine, to David Hume, or to “outdated” original scientific works— Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Maxwell—to converse with great minds, and to practice thinking differently.
Sure, it always helps to know the history of the research goal
In Karin Moelling (2017). Viruses: More Friends Than Foes (p. 206). WSPC
"What a pity that the viroid researcher H.L. Sänger in Giessen did not live to learn about the general consequences of the viroids, which become a principle of biology 50 years after their spectacular discovery. A present-day circRNA researcher ... did not mention it in his publication or plenary lecture. The papers by Sänger and Diener were not quoted at all. Is that a bad habit, or forgetfulness, .....? The knowledge of history of science is short-lived, sadly so. Some people find it boring!"
Though C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) introducing Athanasius' On the Incarnation was writing about a book on theology, not science, what he wrote relates to this discussion. He wrote:
"The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire."
And after that:
"Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them."
Another illustration is in this November 11, 2024 Phys.org. article:
https://phys.org/news/2024-11-nasa-voyager-uranus-mysteries.html
Mining old data from NASA's Voyager 2 solves several Uranus mysteries
"...new research analyzing the data collected during that flyby 38 years ago has found that the source of that particular mystery is a cosmic coincidence. It turns out that in the days just before Voyager 2's flyby, the planet had been affected by an unusual kind of space weather that squashed the planet's magnetic field, dramatically compressing Uranus's magnetosphere."
On literature geneally is this quote from
https://lithub.com/how-to-be-a-writer-10-tips-from-rebecca-solnit
"Read good writing, and don’t live in the present. Live in the deep past ... "
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