Comments on: Funding Basic Research

By: marcy

marcy — Mon, 01 Sep 2003 03:58:21 +0000

Claire Tomalin’s biography of Pepys is excellent and fills in much of the information about his life and times on either side of the diary

By: Dell Adams

Dell Adams — Mon, 01 Sep 2003 01:44:50 +0000

http://pepysdiary.com/

By: nick sweeney

nick sweeney — Sun, 31 Aug 2003 22:35:16 +0000

Actually, Petty’s view is better contextualised when you appreciate that he, together with Oxonian sparkle Thomas Willis, was responsible for the ‘resurrection’ of Anne Green back in 1650 when he was in his late twenties. He was a 17th-century anatomist, a hands-on type: one of those in that generation which remained sceptical of the formalisation of ‘experimental philosophy’, even as his colleagues embraced the opportunities that rose from the transition from ad hoc study groups in Oxford and London to the more formal organisations of Gresham College and the Royal Society. And I get the feeling that he didn’t particularly fit in with the clubbable world of science in the 1660s. Hence his decision to apply his abilities in other fields. What was Planck’s comment? ‘A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grow up that is familiar with it.’

By: dsquared

dsquared — Sun, 31 Aug 2003 22:22:13 +0000

Petty was also the first really good theorist of taxation, and the first good British economist. I’ve just realised that I ought to have posted a proper “hiatus” announcement by the way; I’m on holiday at the moment.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Sun, 31 Aug 2003 19:34:29 +0000

Very interesting. Sounds so like Gulliver in Laputa, or a bit farther along like the US Senator Proxmire who loved to laugh at pure research. So heart-warming, how full history is of sniggering Philistines laughing at everything they don’t instantly understand. Charles II and Charles III, a pair of know-nothings mocking their betters. Very tiring.