Scientists are not generally working solely for money but they do require money (sometimes large amounts of money) to do their work. A large example was the superconducting super collider that would have been built in Texas, but was cancelled in 1993 after $2 billion had already been spent. The physics world then had to wait 15 years until 2008 for the large hadron collider at CERN.

I agree that we are currently seeing a danger of obscurantism, mysticism etc. that is directed at science more than it used to be, and may impact many areas such as scientific funding, education, and government policy. In particular, people seem less willing to trust experts and more likely to believe unsubstantiated claims (e.g. that vaccines cause autism).

My current thought is that some of this may actually come from otherwise useful features of the world today. The two main features that come to mind are that information of all types is more widely and quickly accessible and that critical thinking skills have moderately improved. Although both of those features are generally desirable, it does also lead to a situation where people both have more ability to question a dominant position and also have access to a wide variety of both well supported and unsubstantiated views. I think that we see a lot of people questioning correct dominant views, not having the relevant expertise to form a new sensible belief, and then latching on to an unsubstantiated position.

If people are less trusting of experts than they used to be, then it would make sense for people to be less trusting of scientists (experts) and hence place less value on science.

Your question is very obvious but E.Karatsuba I have little doubt about your point of reference because in the field of science we reached to some great extent in last decade or in this century itself.

The another thing that i would like to address you that when you compare the time we have light microscope to electron microscope discovery has another reference but now your reference is something big so whatever you are getting everyday you compare and say it is not enough.

One more basic thing is the consumer mindset.....this comes into practice of engineering which has become the driving force in many of the developing country.

Your one question regarding money part ....science never paid to any scientist it only the engineering that gives this edge otherwise scientist contains a group of passionate people who works on idea (i will not rules out possibility of million dollar scientist.

I'm not sure that science really has slowed down much (although federal funding in the U.S. has been systematically cut over the past decade or so). But there continue to be many advances in all of the basic sciences. Of course, major advances tend to be rare and tend to be followed by periods in which a science spends more time working out the details that follow major advances.

Is your real question why we don't dedicate more resources to science to continue to accelerate the rate of advance?

Saurav Kumar,

please, call me a theory constructed during last 50 years which is comparable with Special Relativity theory or Quantum theory? All engineering invention are based on physics. Now we spend a supply which provided for us our colleagues 100 years ago.

Vaughn Huckfeldt,

your question: "why we don't dedicate more resources to science to continue to accelerate the rate of advance?"

is only one part of more general problem. Generally speaking, scientists are working not for money. But they and their discoveries and inventions need an attention, interest and respect of all community. Unfortunately at present we observe not only regression of science, but also regression of education accompanied by obscurantism, mysticism etc. which supported by mass media. How you can provide a real support (in all senses) of science from community which doesn't respect scientific discoveries, science and education?

But my main question is: such situation is a regularity or is it randomness based on the wrong community behavior (the governments are also a part of communities)?

Scientists are not generally working solely for money but they do require money (sometimes large amounts of money) to do their work. A large example was the superconducting super collider that would have been built in Texas, but was cancelled in 1993 after $2 billion had already been spent. The physics world then had to wait 15 years until 2008 for the large hadron collider at CERN.

I agree that we are currently seeing a danger of obscurantism, mysticism etc. that is directed at science more than it used to be, and may impact many areas such as scientific funding, education, and government policy. In particular, people seem less willing to trust experts and more likely to believe unsubstantiated claims (e.g. that vaccines cause autism).

My current thought is that some of this may actually come from otherwise useful features of the world today. The two main features that come to mind are that information of all types is more widely and quickly accessible and that critical thinking skills have moderately improved. Although both of those features are generally desirable, it does also lead to a situation where people both have more ability to question a dominant position and also have access to a wide variety of both well supported and unsubstantiated views. I think that we see a lot of people questioning correct dominant views, not having the relevant expertise to form a new sensible belief, and then latching on to an unsubstantiated position.

If people are less trusting of experts than they used to be, then it would make sense for people to be less trusting of scientists (experts) and hence place less value on science.

@Ekaterina Karatsuba I am really appreciating you for so nice talk. Yes you are correct to some extent if you look for classical and quantum approach of science only. I would request you to please try to understand what i am trying to say: about present research direction. Yes we are working hard to prove those theories on the practical form eg you can find in case of Hings Boson. but the other thing you can find so much finding and avenues in the area of photonics, optics which is supposed to be side arm of physics.

Scientist are working very well in terms of transgenics plants and vaccination which you can not defy 100% it is giving so much to our society.

Due to smart material concept and research on nanotechnology which was really pioneered 60 to 70 years back but now it is growing on the blood and sweat of young and hard working shoulders.

Once again I would not prefer to compare your unparallel line or two different time frame because I still remember "one guys in my school days asked to our teacher why not we are studying any new or modern law like we study law given by Newton, Gay Lusac , Charles , Boyles, Mendle all has given laws in different areas but why we are just studying only theories of modern hard working scientist"------ I was surprised yes earlier people has given laws without even small instruments or prior ideas but what we are doing , but after studying and working I find we are giving meaning to their finding yes real meaning which uses earlier knowledge but it is much more grown in its own sphere.

Please try to know about the area which i mentioned:

Look for space science,- Chandrashekhar has worked which was carried after 1950.

Artificial DNA, Nucleotides were created which was also after 1960s,

The science behind how protein form in your body and how you can replicate it outside also was done later.

Fiber optics research is still in its infant age but giving so much comfort in your life.

I find you are 100% correct and I am also not wrong its about our perspective of observation.

Thank you

Saurav Kumar,

I think, to call simply great discoveries and inventions in different fields this is not a right "scientific way" for comparison, do we have the same rates of science development as before, or not? One should to choose one field ( it can be every field from number theory in Mathematics till Medicine and Pharmaceuticals, for example, the cures from terrible diseases) and to look, what was, say, 70--140 years ago and 70 last years.

Such impression that last years not only new decisive means to combat diseases did not appear, but did new terrible diseases appear! By the way, artificial DNA and around --- it can be a "medal with two sides", or rather the Moon with its dark side. Transgenics plants etc. should be tested at least during life of three generations (before wide use), as I think. About Higgs boson, I like more the story about James Maxwell, who predicted many things which was not confirmed during his life. But when his student did an experiment which confirmed predicted by him the light pressure, Maxwell explained why this is not a confirmation and why the experiment isn't a clean one. I am sure he would decline any awards before real confirmation, although he was always right (at present we know it). Show business did not play such a big role in Maxwell times, but honest name of a physicist plays!

Ekaterina, thx for the intriguing question.

Three very broad comments mostly concerning Physics:

- I don't see Physics in any kind of a stagnating state, and I would usually expect that significant (or revolutionary in Kuhnian terms) scientific advances are difficult to be broadly recognized immediately after their advent in a lab or in some theoretical work

- Physics perhaps continues to be the science which shows the closest and most immediate relationship with technique, and the last century was one of continuous (and incestuously conjugated if you allow me) advancement in both domains, also suggesting it may be difficult to thing of a regression in the practical plane

- it is possible that physics has lost part of the ontological privileges it enjoyed from Galileu, Laplace and Comte till the late 1950s (although it certainly maintains its innate monopoly on cosmology), and perhaps Neuroscience is taken part of those privileges in technically-oriented circles; but this wouldn't suggest a regression in the ontological plane, I believe, just a widening in our philosophical enquiries.

One final comment: when we look at some aspects of societal life, science and technique may have become a sort of artefact for political action (this has been noted, e.g. in environmental mobilizations). If that is, by any means, true, than science has not been subjected to regression, but to wide banalization instead. S&T has become a Babel world too, with many contenders trying to get its share in funds administrated in the political field; in general, this might have contributed not to sheer regression in funding and science, but rather to wider forms of dispute for funding, politically oversold impact, accompanied by a revision of the way politicians look at science.

The regression of modern science is a consequence of the wrong policy in the field of science

Diogenes Alves

"I don't see Physics in any kind of a stagnating state, and I would usually expect that significant (or revolutionary in Kuhnian terms) scientific advances are difficult to be broadly recognized immediately after their advent.."

what modern physical theory can be considered as a worthy successor of, say, Dirac Quantum Field theory? What Theory is able to cover old open problems, of the same Dirac's theory or of the General Relativity Theory?

"Physics perhaps continues to be the science which shows the closest and most immediate relationship with technique, and the last century was one of continuous (and incestuously connjugated if you allow me) advancement in both domains." ---

You are right, stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation was described around 1915--1916, and the first maser was made in 1954, first laser in 1960. At present lasers are widely used even in surgery. The question is: what phys.phenomenon determined at present can be realized in a similar way in 40 years? What realization of a physical phenomenon opened, say, 30--40 years ago we can observe at present?

Ekaterina, I admit I have no answer to your legitimate question "what modern physical theory can be considered as a worthy successor of, say, Dirac Quantum Field theory".

Still, I'm not sure we could recognize such a theory today (I also admit this might seem as radical constructivism, though); neither I am sure the exposition of Physics to politics is so radically different today than it was in most of the Cold War period, when the share of funding allocated to Physics may have been been more generous than it is today.

Greetings from the tropics.

It would be good, Diogenes, if we "could not recognize such a theory today". Much worse, if there is nothing to recognize today.

I want to the tropics! At the same time, good news is : Spring will be soon in Moscow.

Vaughn Huckfeldt,

I am upset to recognize about the sad story of the superconducting super collider in Texas. In the present times, it's very important to have independent verifying investigations in all important fields. Not speaking about the fact, that when such super collider appears, a group of good scientists and engineers appears together with it, and this is like environment in which you may receive a truly outstanding scientist and/or engineer. For what they save the money? To spend them for fantastic movies and computer games? On this you can immediately earn money. But it actually vices! And vices should be subject to overtax to spend them for science from physics to medicine what as result will be profitable for all people !

Ekaterina wrote:

The 'regression' is far wider than the things discussed here. It is happening in all domains, an inversion ''at boundary" (with topologic properties), like hitting a ceiling and falling back down. Also occurrring in individual lives. Inversion of what? It is not a 'law of human development', just a 'pervasive' (or non local) property of a global deployment that takes many names: Advancement and its downsides, productive and counter-productive effects. The worst is that this orienting is an autoreinforcing process, and the more we try to correct it, the worse we make it.

This can affect animals too, but the contemporary human world has made it a form of scientific art to turn this into a systematic auto-reinforced regression or critical condition. This is a cyclical stage - it's not the first time. But proponents of all the countless forms of advancement never learn the lesson, never see. As right now. Just "look" at the human world without fragmentation, to see these topologic properties, which are then obvious - as they are to the daily life common sense or 'intuitive' quality denied validity by complex, fragmented knowledge and practice.

Vladimir,

however, these "who currently owns the resources of the Earth" should have interest to science since just science makes the level of life more high. They should also be interested in the prolongation of their "dolce vita", and the research in medicine is connected closely with biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science, so they must develop all these fields, but we do not observe anything like this. Why?

Wirth has the authority to state that, as he has been one outstanding contributor to his field - computer techniques - and has never lost his ability to critically thinking. Computer techniques, aka computer science/engineering, is probably the paramount example of post-modern ephemerity, which is not a natural law, but mostly a consequence of programmed obsolescence, as it is one prominent cradle for technico-fatalist a-ethics (not to be confused with anti-ethics).

However, IF Wirth is limiting the problem to what he calls a post-modern academic environment (I'm not sure that he is), then the analysis seems reminiscent of (German) Romanticism, and, as such, is as old as enlighted modernity.

Academia has never been the romantic home of wise, learned men - it suffices to look at Galilei dedication pages to the powerful, at the role of scholars in the French Ancien Regime and Revolution, at the permanent promise of Armageddon that Nobel seemed to be aware of - but it has also been a cradle of enlighted thinking.

I don't think we have any evidence that Academia will save the world, but I believe it continues to hold this doubled-sided characteristic, this ambivalence typical of it, which probably is the ultimate legitimation for its relative autonomy.

Note: this includes popularity contests on internet disguised as 'science outreach', and creating popular posters in conferences, with official advice being: put a bag of candy in front of your poster to attract attention if you have to... Is that science?

So, if we are to accept that "survival" pressure , behind money, is the ultimate ruling principle in science as it is in the rest of society,

(1) why do most people & scientists deny that our "human" world and "human behaviour", which are destroying both planet and human health integrity are based on that principle? (and refuse to publish studies about that)

(2) Is science to now be 100% reduced to justifying the "bandwagon"

(3)Is there is no more place to study anomalies and marginal cases? - fundamental science -

(4) then why are research students still told hypocritically that they are supposed to do "original research"??? ... and become collateral damage if they are naive enough to take this literally! I feel betrayed, as well as disgusted and ashamed of the labels 'researcher' and 'human'.

Dear Vladimir,

do you believe in Skolkovo? Besides a very interesting for this "Potemkin" project name (for those, who doesn't know Russian, "Skolkovo" sounds very closely to "Skol'ko" or "Vo skol'ko", what means in Russian "how much") I don't see anything really useful there.

"...but the purpose same - profit already today." --- here you are totally right. For people, who organized these "Innovative" centers, profit, really, already today from the country's budget. What they mean speaking biotechnology --- I don't know. I know that a great part of money for "computational technologies" was spent for an animal (the goat Mashka?) genome decoding. The problem is interesting, of course. But what relation it has to computational technologies?

Vladimir,

unfortunately, politicians do life of scientists more easy or more complicated.

Sometimes, they simply don't understand the situation in science because their advisors dupe them into the profit of certain groups around of science.

As for Perelman --- he could be my hero only if anybody from other good scientists could confirm that he REALLY proved anything towards the Poincare hypothesis.

To confirm this fact, this assumed somebody from good scientists must know the Perelman proof. Unfortunately nobody knows it. That is why all noise around Perelman, his rejecting the prize and so on, look like theatrical piece with Harlequin, Columbine, Pulcinella, etc. The natural question: if nobody knows the Perelman proof, why "you" do give him the award? ---> May be other awards were given also for proofs who nobody knows? ----> What is the price of such awards? ----> What is the value of Perelman result, if he didn't prove the Poincare hypothesis? -----> Why, in general, "you" do make such a fuss around this story if you do not know the proof?

I can not answer these questions!--- Can you?

Dear Ekaterina!

Now Science is a social institute and, therefore, follows social laws.

As an example, RG statistics shows (see numbers in the beginning of any sufficiently large thread) that only 10 percent are active participants (other observers) and only unique persons have original ideas.

Do You remember Tarkovski's definition of Art? It is that has no any attitude to many. We can not say this about modern science, unfortunately.

With best regards,

Eugene.

Excuse me, money, not many.

Eugene,

I told mostly not about researcher/author's relation to Science (or to Art), but of the community attitude to Science and Art and especially to a Researcher.

In addition to Andrey Tarkovski words (I like very much his "Solaris" and "Stalker"),

I can mention the Ernest Rutherford words about Research and Money, which he often told to his students (according to Peter Kapitza) : "It's impossible to serve simultaneously to God and to Mammona". Science and Art --- it's from God, godlike one.

So, to provide research by money ---this is not a task of the researcher. However, poor support of science by money, the worsening financial and status positions of scientists is, as I think, an evidence of some changes in attitudes to science and research in society.

Dear Bernd,

you wrote:

"The best of us will survive in a top laboratory. (and those will neither be from Hollywood nor will they have proven the Riemann hypothesis.) The others, that is, most of us, will provide biological material for the surviving 'new species'. "

What do you mean "in a top laboratory"? If you believe they are "the best of us", why they will not from those who will prove the Riemann hypothesis? Why they ("the best of us") will not participate in providing "biological material for the surviving 'new species'"? If this "biological material for the surviving 'new species'" will be from not "the best of us", does it mean that this 'new species' will be even stupider and worse in all relations than "we"?

It is a very big question, Ekaterina,

Is Science Good or Evil?

Apparently people love to pay for entertainment, fun, etc. and not for science. I have heard top administrators jeering that scientists should play their part. When it comes to funding they are the very ones not interested to fund the projects. Could be that people have seen too many inventions in the near past??? Maybe scientists should take some time off ??? Only then these people will realize what scientists are doing today!

Thus, it is the consequence of wrong policy bred by ungratefulness born due to excessive use of much valuable and affordable services provided by the ever-grateful scientists.

Dear Ekaterina,

Difficult question, but at the core of the problem.

First of all the concept of scientific today is a matter of bureaucracy: They have told me by the most serious way that "...we will give you the PhD..." so they own it and if I am a good guy and do all my services without complaints, then, after many years, "...they will give me the PhD"... What do you conclude from such a cynical statement? That a PhD is the core of science as a new knowledge or that PhD is another brick in a power construction which has nothing to do with science?

PhD is the joke, Demetris.

Happy Christmas to all!

Dear Bernd, Demetris and Eugene,

the bureaucracy is a part of our system. The system should define such a place for the bureaucracy to prevent them to take part in the solution of problems which they do not understand, generally speaking. If the regress in science is because of the bureaucracy, it's not so complicated to correct this process,  I hope.

Merry Christmas to everybody ! 

Bureaucracy is immortal, Ekaterina.

Merry Christmas to You!

Dear Ekaterina,

Your question has reverberating passion as to why the progress of science is not as big and valued as it was in its older times. Why more ground breaking results are not obtained and why society stopped valuing  science.

Think of research and scientific discovery as an activity made in a space where a person can still push forward and get a new spot in the space, that is augmenting an existing result and even possible an outstanding finding far from the existing results, as long as the person can imagine farther and land in a different spot on the wider space.

But if what you said is true, that the progress of science is receding (but I believe there are multitudes of new natural truth out there to be discovered and be included in the knowledge bank of science ), then it seems the search spots reached to the edges or boundary of the space and pushing forward from existing results using existing principles is no more  possible unless a different and higher order principles and axioms are created to pass that edge and get in to the new and outer field of higher order research - think of the fields as concentric spheres of increasing radii with very thin and penetrable surfaced boundaries. 

Regarding devaluing science and scientists, society is no more bound to appreciate people of academics, as people of least education controls society. They create social medias, electronics and highly involve themselves in social affairs,

Academicians in the contrary peruse the old and traditional style of entertaining what they study with very narrow group of alike people with minimal desire to participate in social affairs of anything outside of what they do, although they were the ones well equipped to reason and think better to bring positive changes in society.  

How many scientists participate in social affairs topics here in RG other than discussing about what they have written and studied with their filed compatriots. Therefore the bureaucracy of politics and power of wealth will take science and scientists as accessories that are essential in doing specific jobs efficiently  for their rule and control over society. 

In a state where world class universities exist, a high school graduate or an obscure person of wealth runs for political office to rule over all people including the well trained, highest thinkers and problem solvers that are in universities, while university people hibernate in their narrow but warm place with no concerns for society.

Dear Dejenie,

unfortunately, You have never seen real science in USSR. Science in the sense of ninteenth century (without money) does exist till now. Now it has only other name.

Regards,

Eugene.

Dear Eugene,

My comments were not towards a specific country and likewise is the question. But what is the contemporary name of science in Russia? By the way USSR is the old name which is no more in use, it is called the Russian federation or simply Russia  today? I am not right dear Ekaterina ? 

With kind regards,

Dejenie.

Now name of science may be hobby, Dejenie. And we all live in one virtual country.

Regards,

Eugene.

How about some kind of periodicity in primes, Ekaterina?

Dear Stefan,

thank you for your answer. I would like to discuss it.

First of all, where was published what exactly told John von Neumann? The context is very important there. Imagine that you retell the Nietzsche quote: “You will never get the crowd to cry hosanna until you ride into the city on an ass.” in the way that Nietzsche recommend to use ass. The context is very important!

There are many legends about von Neumann which are not confirmed by published sources, but if it's not confirmed (like, for example, von Neumann is the author of Merge Sort algorithm from 1948, which was published in 1963 for the first time, after Tony Hoare published his Quick Sort algorithm), this is only legend.

I heard, John von Neumann was a great organizer of science who headed a “nuclear project” in U.S.A., and his real opinion about science development and about the reasons of the stagnation in science can be very valuable.

Anyway, your idea supports in realty the concept about natural way of modern stagnation is science.

On the other hand, who did establish “limitations of the analytical-mathematical method”?

If you or me are not able to get a result using certain method who can establish that this method is not good, but not the researchers who used it?

About computer: unfortunately it exists not separately from people, what it has inside --- the people introduced, and if they introduced mistakes it will calculate with mistakes. You know, one of the main modern problems in computer science is the “Table maker dilemma”: let computer is a black box, how to prepare a test which could provide an answer to the question: how many digits in any your calculation are right?

I believe, there are no old or new methods or tools, there are methods or tools which provide a result I need, or do not provide it: then I should invent a new method which will provide the result.

I think, at present many people prescribe to science some features which it hasn't but which characterize our “time of business and show-business”. I mean, that in time of Newton, Euler and Mozart, there were bad scientists and composers, but nobody wrote especially empty (which have no relation to real science, like physical theories about many hidden dimensions etc.) and speculative results or created a cacophony and tried to present it as a top results or as a very good modern music.

Not science is guilty, but people who use it like a business: they don't try to get new knowledge, they try to live their life more comfortable and rich without hard labor like parasites. But my question is: such a situation is natural but a result of wrong policy (the policy can be not only in science, all modern life is supported by certain policy)?

@ Ekaterina

There is a simple way to understand this, with small and large distorsions of shape - an animated geometry. I'll try to put it to words; try to imagine.

Science, policy, and money,  are all expression of a 'deployment' of human endeavour. Value has the same 3 forms (measure, values, evaluation), also expressions of deployment. This deployment takes various names, including 'development', but many others. As a single, or global phenomenon, deployment follows simple rules that can be formulated in terms of a simple geometric topology.

When an oriented activity such as a development 'reaches' boundary, it spreads and splits into different directions, like water hitting a surface (directions: such as the groups of 3 that I mentioned; these are different perspectives of explanation and experience).. If the deployment is 'pushed' further, it can 'breach' boundary and advance (get through the surface). The advancement is a re-deployment, which can also be pushed to boundary. But if this occurs too intensely, intead of reaching and breaching the next boundary (and then advancing more), it hits the boundary and 'falls' back down, regresses. This sort of progressive distorsion  can repeat and produce for example our obsession with 'the way up' in many different ways, or produce temporary rebounds that first appear like improvements, then turn into hell.  Current 'science' is little more than  a regression of measurement into counting, complicated by reformulations of basic operations, but not using more senstive mathematical tools.

This little animated geometry can model just as simply a anxious person falling into depression and being 'pushed' by medical drugs into becoming a bipolar person.  It can model how the social equality advances of the 20th century in the West have turned into spreading poverty and loss of access to 'basic' medicine, that of Rest & Recovery. It can model how valuing the top, the extreme, progress, advancement etc has led to devaluing fundamental science. It can model how the few at the top develop policies that crush an increasing number of peole and favour only the normal, the dominant, for example statistics in medicine.

So my reply is: yes, there is 'law' or 'rule' to this regression phenomenon, which is found in many fields, which people 'in the street' do sense in many ways, It is not the first time this occurs in human history.. Moreover, the 'rules' are quite simple.

Dear Marika,

  thank you for your interesting answer and a creative explanations. On the other hand, I think that death is also a law of life. However, people are trying to extend the life by all possible means, and many countries achieved success, using also the correct policy. Why is the same not apply to the development of science and contra stagnation in science?

@Stefan Gruner:  If you move the mouse to the top right corner of any of your posts, a button will appear that gives you the option to edit/delete your message. Hope this helps.

Dear Stefan,

   I agree with a lot in your opinion. Of course, the computer calculations are very important. However, you (and me) invent new algorithms (for computer) mostly by analytical way.

There was such a legend that Volker Strassen invented his matrix multiplication algorithm using the computer programming (soft written by him to find the corresponding relations, 7 block multiplications instead of 8). However, he told me himself, it's wrong: he found it analytically.

Generally speaking. it's possible to use a mix: computer and analytical methods even to find a proof of an analytical problem, I did it once for my work

"On the asymptotic representation of the Euler gamma function by Ramanujan".

This is an absolutely strict and right proof with use of computer calculations (for certain segment to prove the monotonicity). However, many mathematicians could not accept it at first. It's interesting that everybody uses the fact that sin \pi/4 = sqrt{2}/2 > 0, but if to get this answer by computer calculations (that certain function is greater than zero at certain point) they don't want to accept it as a fact. Of course, you can calculate it yourself using expansions. But for many thousands of points with good accuracy you will spend much more time than computer spends.

So I understand the benefits of computer. But to find analytically new algorithm or new property of numbers/functions is much more exciting!

@H.E. Lehtihet and Stefan Gruner

Deletion option also can be invalid sometimes.

Stefan,

try to change your operational system to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

Dear colleagues,

how can state support science knowing nothing about it?

Average mentality of humans is not changing. Illusion of regression appears because of growth of number of engaged.

Екатерина,

знаете ли Вы эту историю с Боголюбовым, когда политбюро предлагало ему бешеные деньги для экспериментальной проверки его теорий, а он посоветовал им пропить эти деньги с цыганами?

Знаете ли Вы, что фон Нейман был ярым адвокатом ядерной бомбардировки Советского Союза во время холодной войны?

Dear Eugene,

    "illusion of regression" appears because of the "quality" of works of the present so-called "top scientists" in comparison with former times. Who is, say, "Bogolyubov of our days" or "Kolmogorov of our days"? Moreover, if you will pay attention to recent winners of prizes including Nobel, Abel and Fields, you can notice that they obtain it not for the solution of certain problem or not because they found something new in science, but for "income" into science. On the other hand, there are "solvers" of some important problems like Fermat Last Theorem who are not solvers (it isn't proved, in realty).

I will be very surprised if the boson will be found (may be it's also "hidden" like hidden dimensions :)) ).Some years ago it was also "found" cold fusion (now all forgot about such event).

Нет, я не знала этих историй.

"Average mentality", it's very interesting function:))

 I think, before the relation to science was more serious, almost reverent.

Dear Ekaterina,

from old science we know (remember) only good (remained) results, but grey "average" is forgotten, though, there were less of it in absolute number.

The value of science (old and new results) is permanently reconsidered.

Dear Ekaterina,

one sees toil and misery everywhere in society and this must certainly afflict science as well. The toil and misery of a vast majority of people in this world finds a mirror in the regression of a science that has lost its joy in doing and inquiring, and obeys rather to the dictatorship of money, prestige, fashion and technology. Where are those who still do science for the sake of science and do not care about any other things?

One should never be desolate, however, and pay attention in order to keep the fire alive. Poet mathematicians as Ramanujan and Kolmogorov shall never perish because there shall always exist those who love their work. And in the present time one is extremely pleased to find surprisingly one day someone who gives a fine proof of a result found in a lost notebook and which was not proved before ;)

There are many major trends to be scared about. But there are many many individuals, many treasures who do not make noise but who whisper beautiful things (and which sometimes seem almost ordinary). There is complexity, but also childlike simplicity. And those who are humble and who seek, shall find.

Best regards.