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Could Isaac Newton Get a Faculty Job? 363

Posted by timothy from the fella-with-the-nutty-apple-theory dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Could Isaac Newton get a faculty job, or is modern society too intolerant of eccentricity? That's one of the questions that Glenn Reynolds asks Neal Stephenson in this interview over at TechCentralstation. Others involve the changing nature of fame in an age of fragmented media, the role of the Seventeenth Century in shaping the modern world, and what it's like to write a book with a fountain pen, in the twenty-first century."
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Could Isaac Newton Get a Faculty Job? More

Could Isaac Newton Get a Faculty Job?

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  • All my professors were adjunct part time folks.
    • I didn't know Isaac Newton was still alive!

      I think that given his age and his contributions to the physics world, he should be given an honorary job at least, and give him tenure too, Jebus the man's old enough.

      • Re:The more important question (Score:5, Insightful)

        by grumpygrodyguy ( 603716 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @11:22PM (#7160200)
        Two words:

        Principia Mathematica.

        There has never been a more significant scientific publication.

        If you published something that important, you could find an appointment just about anywhere...even if you were purple and lived off of pop-rocks.

        • No, it's four words (Score:3, Informative)

          by panurge ( 573432 )
          The proper title is Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis. The only time I ever found Latin useful was when I had to write an essay on Newton and the only copy of the Principia in the library was the Latin version. Stretching a point, you could say, in fact, that Latin was the first scientific programming language.

  • Maybe (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AlxRogan ( 644441 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:01PM (#7159708)
    I don't think he could get a job, but if he already had one, he could definetely get tenure.

    • Re:Maybe (Score:2, Funny)

      by kryonD ( 163018 )
      I bet he would be this no-name Janitor who does complex proofs while mopping the floor and beat up his kindergarden cassmates for kicks.

      Oh wait, that was Matt Damon...wrong guy.

    • Re:Maybe (Score:3, Funny)

      by mesach ( 191869 )
      maybe he could get together with PBS and host the show named after him...

      "Newton's Apple"

      Doo doo do do to do doo
      Doo doo do do to do doo
      Doo doo do do to do doo

      c'mon you know the theme

  • Assholes abound (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:01PM (#7159712) Journal
    Newton is rumored to have been an uber-asshole. An asshole among assholes. His main trait wasn't that he was eccentric, it was that he was an asshole to each and everyone he met.

    It depends on the university and the department chair, but I'm willing to bet that you can find assholes in faculty at any given university.

    So yes, Isaac Newton could probably have been hired on despite his assholeness.
    • Look at Dan J. Bernstein of qmail/DJBDNS fame/infamy. He managed to become the department head, if I recall, and he's... well, according to what you say, he's certainly of Newtonian stature.

      steve
    • So yes, Isaac Newton could probably have been hired on despite his assholeness.

      I would imagine Newton could get a job at somewhere like Cambridge. Hell, they give that wheelchair guy a job and he's hanging out with strippers all the time. I'd say Hawking's pretty eccentric. Now that I think about it.. didn't Newton have a job at Cambridge too?

      • Re:Assholes abound (Score:3, Informative)

        by orthogonal ( 588627 )
        Now that I think about it.. didn't Newton have a job at Cambridge too?

        I'm assuming you're joking; I'm also assuming some /.ers won't get it.

        Yeah, he had an insignificant little job, sorta equivalent to a modern "Dorm Mother": he was the second Lucasian Chair of Mathematics.

        Hell, they give that wheelchair guy a job and he's hanging out with strippers all the time. I'd say Hawking's pretty eccentric.

        Stephen Hawking, of course, is the current Lucasian Chair.
        • Stephen Hawking, of course, is the current Lucasian Chair.

          I would say he has the current Lucasian wheelchair of Mathematics.

          (before you mod me down, I am only joking)

      • Re:Assholes abound (Score:2, Interesting)

        by citadelgrad ( 612423 )
        Isaac Newton was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics which he started in 1669. This is the same Chair (sorry couldn't resist) that Stephen Hawking now occupies. I seriously doubt this position is for teaching classes. I've never met a PHD that wasn't eccentric!
      • There are still plenty of arseholes at trinity, so he shouldn't have too much of a problem.

    • he was an asshole in respect to those times. What would get you considered to be an asshole even 20 years ago is acceptble today.
    • Leibnitz invented much of the calculus at the same time as Newton and there was some controversy about the credit. Nowadays calculus books credit both, and the notation d/dx and the integral sign is mostly Leibnitz's work, but the notation used in physics of a dot above a variable to indicate differentiation is Newton's.

      Anyways, Newton would apparently go ballistic if someone even mentioned Leibnitz and when he was in the room he had turn around and people would write down "Leibnitz" not indicate who they

  • Probably not (Score:5, Funny)

    by dr_dank ( 472072 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:04PM (#7159732) Homepage Journal
    The spectre of lawsuits arising from apples to the head would be enough to turn Sir Issac away at the door.

  • If he was born today (Score:5, Insightful)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:05PM (#7159741)
    His eccentricity would no doubt have been diagnosed as ADD or ADHD. He would have been drugged with narcotics and told to behave himself.

    • Re:If he was born today (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Um, no. Narcotics are drugs like heroin and morphine that put one into a state of narcosis.

      Stimulants like amphetamine or methylphenidate are prescribed for ADD. These drugs increase the ability of one to focus, which means he probably would have come up with even more ideas.

      To conclude, stimulants != narcotics. Stimulants -> greater focus -> better ideas.

      Kthx.

    • Re:If he was born today (Score:5, Informative)

      by eidechse ( 472174 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:17PM (#7159829)
      You're probably right. My father-in-law, a psychologist, was reading about various historical smart people and thought the descriptions of their personalities/habits sounded consistent with people diagnosed as ADD/ADHD.
      • It's funny that you so blantantly exemplify the availability heuristic when making an "educated" comment about psychology. :)
      • ADHD is a common misdiagnosis applied to the highly gifted. The core feature (according to Barkley) of ADHD is physical uninhibition when distracted. But, the essence of high giftedness is sufficient independence and passion to seriously annoy the authorities. There is a clear difference, but the distinction is too subtle for authoritarians.

        --
        Mike Burns

        • Re:If he was born today (Score:5, Informative)

          by 11223 ( 201561 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @12:33AM (#7160531)
          It's not about authoritarianism, you blasted postmodernist. It's about whether or not gifted people actually have an attention deficit, which they clearly do not. They just think faster. See this paper [sengifted.org] for more serious information about misdiagnosis and dual diagnosis for gifted (in particular ADHD, ODD, and OCD), and why it happens.

  • Interview (Score:3, Funny)

    by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:05PM (#7159746)
    The HR blimp would call him "overqualified" and middle management would ignore him because his agency told him to "put his education last."

    • Re:Interview (Score:2, Funny)

      by rifftide ( 679288 )
      "Mr. Newton, we were looking for someone with an advanced degree in either Aristotelian natural philosophy or alchemic science, and 5+ years experience in the computation of epicycles. However we will keep your resume on file and will let you know if a suitable opportunity arises."

  • Not just scientists (Score:5, Insightful)

    by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby&comcast,net> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:09PM (#7159772)
    This isn't just science. How many major computer companies were founded by people who never even finished college? Dell, Microsoft, Apple, and so on, these are all companies that would never hire their own founders considering them unqualified. I'm reasonably certain that this problem persists in other industries as well.

    • Re:Not just scientists (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Aadain2001 ( 684036 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:49PM (#7160004) Journal
      We need a 10, RightOnTheMoney score for this post. I've watched over the past 5 years as requirements for just getting in the door have been increased faster than a NY stock exchange trader's blood pressure. Education is very important, but so is other traits. The more I hear about how companies "filter" people out, them more I want to form my own company. They don't "filter" a person because they aren't qualified. I've been told that if you don't have a 3.0 in college, you shouldn't show it off. But if you have a high GPA, like 3.7, 3.8, etc, then you had better show that are "well rounded" as well or else they won't want you! What BS is that?!?!?! I can be too good?!?! Do they think that only 1% of all graduates are good enough for their companies and the other 99% should be cutting hair or picking up trash?!?!?! Bah, I'm getting tired of this crap.

      • Re:Not just scientists (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Evil Adrian ( 253301 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @11:22PM (#7160199) Homepage
        Education is very important, but so is other traits.

        Like the ability to properly conjugate "to be"!

        I've been told that if you don't have a 3.0 in college, you shouldn't show it off. But if you have a high GPA, like 3.7, 3.8, etc, then you had better show that are "well rounded" as well or else they won't want you! What BS is that?!?!?! I can be too good?!?! Do they think that only 1% of all graduates are good enough for their companies and the other 99% should be cutting hair or picking up trash?!?!?! Bah, I'm getting tired of this crap.

        A college degree, first and foremost, shows a willingness and dedication to bettering yourself, and to stick with something. It shows that you were willing to take at least 2-3 years to stick with something and educate yourself. That drive sets you apart from people that said "fuck it" when they could have hit the books.

        A GPA less than 3.0 is average. You don't accentuate the average on a resume. You want to show what sets you apart from other people, so that's why you don't show a low GPA on a resume.

        And well-rounded is important, too -- do you want to hire some "genius" with a 4.0 GPA that can't even communicate effictively with other human beings?

        Besides that, resumes aren't what get you hired -- interviews are. Resumes are used to get the company interested, you basically show what sets you apart from everyone else. Then they bring you in to see if you're what they're looking for.

        And honestly, so what if companies want the top 1% of graduates? If I ran my own company, I'd be trying to hire the best of the best. GPA isn't one of my criteria, but if that's someone else's, that's their prerogative.

        It isn't helpful to get upset about hiring criteria; these companies are just trying to find excellent employees. You need to figure out why you are excellent, and show that to those companies in your resume.
        • And well-rounded is important, too -- do you want to hire some "genius" with a 4.0 GPA that can't even communicate effictively with other human beings?

          Why do you feel that a good GPA and good communication skills are mutually exclusive?

        • Yeah I've seen the kind of people who get hired this way. People who can put on a great show, and once hired turn out to be turkeys who don't do anything, but the boss sure does love them! They should all be receptionists if you ask me.

          I think if I'm getting hired for a job and I can communicate effectively that should be the basis I am hired for, not for if I give a great interview. An interview should not be a social occasion.

          And if a genius with a 4.0 can't communicate effectively with other human

        • If you think you want only the top 1% to work at your company, you shouldn't create a company. What matters much more than credentials, to create a succesful company, is the ability of the employee to work in a team, and to meet goals - and to overcome obstacles. Far to many of the recent top 1% lack this ability - and this is ofthen the most important. Besides, there's only a finite group of companies that can hire the top 1%, or 10%, or whatever%
    • Hey, it's still possible, if you've got the balls to apply. Good places realize that sometimes a college education really means you knuckle under to the Man easily.

      I knew a bunch of people at Apple who were degree-less. They sure were more fun than the degreed ones.
    • Perhaps that's a good thing. This way we get more people founding new and interesting companies because they can get a job at a company. : )

    • Re:Not just scientists (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:35AM (#7161114) Journal
      . How many major computer companies were founded by people who never even finished college? Dell, Microsoft, Apple, and so on, these are all companies that would never hire their own founders considering them unqualified.

      I think the key word there is "hire". When you are hiring somebody, you are looking for some credentials to demonstrate that you aren't wasting your time/money hiring this person.

      A founder, howeever, only has to convince himself he/she has the credentials. In all my years operating as a consultant in various capacities, I've never been seriously asked about my credentials. I've only been asked about expenses and timelines.

      An interesting side-effect of being a consultant is that when your bid is accepted, you skip all the chains of command in most organizations and usually fit in somewheres near the top in the organizational heirarchy. In other words, people don't give you lip.

      Contrary to popular belief, you do not need a college degree to be successful in the IT sector. You just won't do it with a "job"....
  • If Isaac newton was alive today he would not be a physicist. He would be a laid off geek sitting and reading slashdot. So, the question of whether he would be accepted as faculty is moot.

  • Biography (Score:5, Informative)

    by breon.halling ( 235909 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:12PM (#7159793)

    If anyone's interested, James Gleick recently released a wonderful biography of Sir Isaac [amazon.com]. It's a very entertaining, very fast read.

    Disclaimer: I've never read any other Newton biography, so I can't validate the accuracy. ;)

  • This the current "publish or perish" environment all those papers establishing the fields of Physics and Calculus may not be enough...

    Actually, this is a very good question. Not because of "excessive quirkyness" because many of the great professors I have met are "querky or weird". But I wonder if Newton would have been able to handle Relativism and Quantum Physics. Many physicists of Einstein's time couldn't handle Relativism and Einstein himself had a problem with Quantum Physics. If Newton lived to 1
    • The word is "Relativity." "Relativism" is usually used after the words "cultural" or "moral." :)

      And I don't think Einstein's problem was understanding quantum mechanics (a field he helped usher in with his work on the photoelectric effect) but rather an uneasiness with the non-determinism in physical processes that QM implied.

  • Politics plays a role (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mc6809e ( 214243 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:19PM (#7159847)
    Don't kid yourselves. Politics is part of the process and I don't mean personal politics. I mean political positions on things like school choice, regulation of the economy, etc.

    The question is: would Newton be smart enough to keep his mouth shut?

    He would have to stay off the blacklist. [frontpagemag.com]

    • that article's bullshit. Maybe it just so happens that "liberals" are a lot more fit to teach at a liberal arts college than "conservatives"? I'd bet you could find that most CEOs are republicans. Seriously, the article confuses correlation and causation.
      • that article's bullshit. Maybe it just so happens that "liberals" are a lot more fit to teach at a liberal arts college than "conservatives"?

        And how do you judge "fitness"? There's the rub. The faculty get to decide if they are fit or not. Guess what they think. And often when it comes to teaching the humanities, fit == leftist politics. Who do you think they hire?

        It's a very incestuous situation. And the biggest problem is that there is NO check on the process. It's all built to maintain the power of l
      • that article's bullshit. Maybe it just so happens that "liberals" are a lot more fit to teach at a liberal arts college than "conservatives"?

        Oh, and one more thing:

        Someone who called himself "liberal" would have to consider alternate viewpoints. Considering the general lack of alternate viewpoints available at universities, faculty should consider themselves merely "leftist".

  • you're kidding...right? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NixterAg ( 198468 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:20PM (#7159860)
    Could Isaac Newton get a faculty job, or is modern society too intolerant of eccentricity?

    Modern society might be, and often for good reason, but if there's any place where eccentricity is tolerated, or promoted even, it's academia. I often think that many of the professors are purposefully eccentric. It's almost become something expected of the truly gifted, and many fraudulently flaunt their own eccentricity for the express purpose of making others think they are gifted. They've heard too many stores about Einstein, Turing, and Newton and get delusions of grandeur.

    The fact is, most Universities won't care if you wear your underwear outside of your pants if you manage to do something truly brilliant. You won't be hired to teach, you'll be hired simply so the University can advertise that you're on staff.
    • The fact is, most Universities won't care if you wear your underwear outside of your pants if you manage to do something truly brilliant. You won't be hired to teach, you'll be hired simply so the University can advertise that you're on staff.

      Well, maybe. European universities are somewhat different. They are competitive, but it is less a question of money for them.

    • most Universities won't care if you wear your underwear outside of your pants if you manage to do something truly brilliant

      ... you mean like fly ?

    • Not THAT tolerant (Score:3, Insightful)

      by artemis67 ( 93453 )
      Newton was a devout Christian and a creationist. That doesn't play well in the modern scientific community, where atheism and agnosticism are the ruling ideologies. If Isaac Newton were applying for a university job today, he would be treated with disdain. From this biography [answersingenesis.org]:

      He loved God and believed God's Word-- all of it. He wrote, 'I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily'. He also wrote, 'Atheism is so senseless. When I

      • Re:Not THAT tolerant (Score:3, Insightful)

        by NixterAg ( 198468 )
        Newton was a devout Christian and a creationist.

        It looks like you opened a can of worms and hopefully, the mod trolls won't mod you down simply because they disagree with you, because I think you do make an excellent point. Whether the disdain you talked about is justified is another point entirely, and you shouldn't be modded down simply because some mod thinks all Christians are simple-minded fools (the biggest mistake anyone can make when studying widely held philosophies is thinking that the philosop

        • Re:Not THAT tolerant (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ponxx ( 193567 )
          can't resist replying to this...

          > Either way, Darwinian evolution is neither a proof of the existence of God or proof of the
          > nonexistence of God (and yes, the very same one revealed in the Bible) and as a Christian, I
          > wish atheists and agnostics would quit throwing it out there like it is.

          The theory of evolution is useful in exposing the blind faith some religious extremist have to their specific interpretation of the their favourite religious book (usually the bible).

          Of course showing that th

  • Depends (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:24PM (#7159890) Homepage
    Depends on Newton's politics. If he joined demonstrations, sculpted a figure of a Catholic bishop with a penis-shaped miter, and referred to the President as "The Bush Junta", he'd have a job, and tenure, almost immediately.

    Sorry to say, I'm not kidding...

  • Why not? John Nash did. (Score:4, Informative)

    by JusTyler ( 707210 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:24PM (#7159891) Homepage
    John Nash was extremely eccentric but held down positions at MIT. [st-and.ac.uk]

  • wasn't newton rich, though? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by the idoru ( 125059 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:31PM (#7159913)
    i confess a lack of historical knowledge here, but wasn't Newton wealthy? wasn't he able to sit around and ponder great mathematical/physical questions because he didn't have to worry about a paycheck?

    if that was the case, i think the real question is, how many independently wealthy people out there these days sit around and ponder the world? i can only think of Stephen Wolfram (of Mathematica fame) and Dean Kamen (dialysis, segway), but even they got wealthy and continue to make money by putting their eccentric thinking towards earning themselves money.

    • Re:wasn't newton rich, though? (Score:4, Informative)

      by panurge ( 573432 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:03AM (#7160886)
      No. His father died young and although his family technically belonged to the squirearchy, they were very poor. As a teenager he had to do farm work. He had to work his way through Cambridge as the poorest grade of student. It's believed that this explained his attitude to money (grasping) in later life. He was able to "sit around pondering" because the University was closed by the plague and he had to go home for a while.

  • Dr. Issac Newton, PhD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kobukson ( 712873 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:33PM (#7159922)
    if the schizophrenic, homosexual, and sometimes just downright bizarre John Nash (forget what you saw in the overly romanticized movie 'A Beautiful Mind'), could maintain a presence in academia and eventually win the Nobel Prize for Economics, then it is likely that Sir Issac Newton could have held a position as a tenured professor.

    although it must be asked: through what lens are we looking at when we say Sir Issac Newton was eccentric? sure he wrote stuff that may seem wierd today, like treatises that speculated on the geological location of Hell. but one must keep in mind that during his time, most scientists were actually "natural philosophers", who investigated matters of philosophy and religion, as well as pure science.

    Newton did make most of his equipment himself, such as grinding his own lenses for Studies in Opticks. I doubt that he would be able to go that today.

    • Re:Dr. Issac Newton, PhD (Score:4, Informative)

      by oob ( 131174 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @11:03PM (#7160086)
      Sorry to be pedantic, but there is no such thing as the "Nobel Prize for Economics."

      Alfred Nobel's will makes provision for four Swedish prizes (Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, Literature) and one Norwegian prize (Peace.) The reason for the seperation is due to Nobel's analysis of the relative merits of the two cultures - he believed that Norwegian society was more enlightened than Sweden thus better equiped to award the Peace prize.

      There is an additional prize called the 'Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel" Which is (as the name suggests) awarded by the Bank of Sweden, NOT by the Swedish or Norwegian Nobel committees. Prestigious as it is, it is not a Nobel Prize.

      More information on the prizes is available here [nobel.se]

    • Re:Dr. Issac Newton, PhD (Score:5, Informative)

      by DarkSarin ( 651985 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @11:04PM (#7160090) Homepage Journal
      begin rant

      The focus of 'A Beautiful Mind' was NOT to document all of his bizarreness, but to demonstrate what schizophrenia could be like--and it did a decent job of it.

      Having worked as a mental health associate in a residential treatment facility that primarily cares for schizophrenics, I think it important to point out a few things.

      First, most schizophrenics are bizarre. By definition. Catatonic schizophrenics may not be, but bizarreness of thought is one of the requirements for diagnosis (source: DSM-IV revised). Thus to say that John Nash was sometimes bizarre is redundant. Of course he was.

      Second, sexuality is unrelated to the discussion. Why bring it up?

      Third, schizophrenia is a very debilitating disease. It is not easily overcome. If you think that the movie was overly romantic, consider this: two-thirds (approximately) of schizophrenics do not get better, regardless of treatment. It is very exceptional that someone with schizophrenia can learn to cope as well as Nash did. His story is exceptional, even if hollywood made it seem "cute" or whatever. I respect him for what he did. The movie, in terms of its treatment of what schizophrenics go through, did a good job of illustrating the nature of thier delusions, hallucinations and paranoia. IF ANYTHING IT UNDERSTATED IT!!!!!

      Having worked with a man who truly believed his mother was a leprechaun, another who believed that he invented the Knight Rider car (but the government stole it, and made the show so they could kill his family and cover it all up) (he also believed that demons would throw "fury darts" at him, and that was why he attacked people), and another (blond) man who believed the devil was persecuting him becuase he had red hair, I have a lot of respect for those who manage to overcome this. I also feel that unless you have worked with these people, you cannot rightfully comment on their "bizarreness".

      end rant

      As an aside (maybe a second rant), I also worked with some who were ADD/ADHD, and it is a strange thing. It is also mostly behavioral (I believe, some will argue), and is very rare outside the US. Ritalin should NEVER be given to children. If you know anything about medicine or psychology, consider this. The test group for Ritalin was adult humans and rats (sometimes different, sometimes not). There has NOT been any solid research on the long-term effects of Ritalin on young children. To generalize the results of studies on adults to children is a good example of bad statistics and medicine.

      I know I haven't cited references like I should, but it is late.
    • Newton did make most of his equipment himself, such as grinding his own lenses for Studies in Opticks. I doubt that he would be able to go that today.

      Experimental physicists, biologists, and chemists all do shop work; it's part of the job.

      And computer scientists do the equivalent--they program and write tools. Part of the job, too.

  • No lack of eccentrics in University faculties (Score:5, Insightful)

    by deanc ( 2214 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:33PM (#7159923) Homepage
    The university system is one of the last havens of eccentricity. It's full of eccentrics. To claim otherwise bespeaks an ignorance of university culture.

    "Normal" people end up in investment banking, consulting, or corporate law where there truly is no room for eccentrics.

  • Only problem being (Score:5, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:39PM (#7159956) Homepage Journal
    Could Isaac Newton get a faculty job, or is modern society too intolerant of eccentricity?

    Eccentricity is ok, its the whole dead thing that might make it hard for him to get hired. Then again, with some of the braindead teachers I have had in the past, maybe not.

    What do you mean you haven't published anything in over 300 years??

  • Even what is left of his now fully decomposed bag of bones would smell better than most of the professors I had while getting my Electrical Engineering degree.
  • If he published a paper at least once a year for two or three years then maybe the University of Piddlesquat Oklahoma might want him. Need a job.. publish, young man! The trick is to publish about something esoteric enough to be considered tops in your field. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance then...PUBLISH

  • Benjamin Franklin (Score:5, Funny)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @11:01PM (#7160069) Journal
    Ben Franklin would probably get arrested for flying a kite without a license.
  • I have met a lot of Profs in Chemical Engineering and not a single one of them is what society would call normal.

    Newton would fit right in.

    Physics profs are pretty strange also.

  • Yes (Score:3, Informative)

    by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @11:18PM (#7160181)
    I remember seeing an interview once with a man who according to IQ tests was the (or one of the) smartest man currently living. He went on about how he was smarter then Einstein but how no one would hire him without a degree and it was so hard to meet other smart people, etc. He said he was going to write a book that would change how we think about physics or something like that, was a bouncer and frankly from what I heard I probably wouldn't hire him either. It takes more than just brains, it takes the desire to use them and that is what great scientists have. You always hear about the mythical super-genius who doesn't get the great education and suddenly gets it and revolutionizes the world, in reality if they didn't bother learning basic math what makes you thnik they'll bother with string theory.

    That's what makes the great scientists, the love of learning, and that's why I think Newton would have made it to Faculty today (assuming he didn't decide to work for a mega-corporation instead). Maybe he wouldn't have flown through school, he could probably find it slow enough to bore him but I feel that modern schooling is dynamic enough from 50 years ago that he would have made it through, remember this is a man who loved to learn, I mean it can't be much less stimulating then 17th century schooling! Now assuming he decides to go into mathematics (or physics) again he goes to university. Now assuming that due to boredom he didn't get great high school marks (I suspect unlikely) Newton wasn't exactly from a poor family and could of probably gone into whatever school he wanted. Once he's in university he's on the path and can pretty much do whatever he wants. If he gets the marks which he could definately do eccentricity would be no obstacle and he would make it into Faculty in no time.

    • Re:Yes (Score:3, Informative)

      by The Revolutionary ( 694752 )
      Christopher Langan, the self-proclaimed "smartest man alive", is, I say, arrogant, childish, and with good reason so far as I am aware more or less only "self-proclaimed" (I qualfiy this incase his goons get wind of it and claim slander).

      He talks big, mostly in a maze of his own terminology, and seems to refer to his position as tautologous, as if that is supposed to be an asset.

      His position being, so far as I can tell, that his great big mind reveals the truth of some sort of spiritualist pantheism; some

  • Some even call me mad (Score:3, Funny)

    by deathcloset ( 626704 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @11:25PM (#7160218) Journal
    And why? Because I dared to dream of my own race of atomic monsters, atomic supermen with octagonal shaped bodies that suck blood...."
  • The big issue would be the debate about who invented calculus. I want to know how that would have gone over had it happened today. Huge plagiary debates! Different notations! Huge egos! Different philosophies!
  • IF Isaac Newton lived today he could probably get an academic job in England or the U.S. At least if he published something truly brilliant first and then applied for a job.

    IF Isaac Newton lived today and took a job in within the English university system he would go nuts (well ... OK, more nuts) with all the time he would be obliged to waste massaging students' egos, marking student assignments and attending teaching skills courses.

    IF Isaac Newton lived today and got an academic job he would quit academe

    • Grant applications? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hughk ( 248126 )
      A very important part of modern research in the US or the UK, is the economic part. No funding, no research. Faculty members are expected to get funding for the department. Tenure brings a salary, but it doesn't fund the grad students.

      To be honest, given the current environment, I have my doubts that Richard Feynmann would get tenure at the moment especially inhis younger years.

  • Newton shouldn't have been hired. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @11:45PM (#7160320) Homepage
    Newton shouldn't have been hired for a faculty job. He was reputed to be the worst teacher ever. He often didn't even pretend to teach, and treated his job as a sinecure. On the occasions when he did pretend to give a lecture, it was generally to an empty hall, because no students would show up.

    A better niche for Newton in modern society would have been a research job at a national lab -- no teaching required, just research.

    You also have to realize that the research world was a massive disaster back then. People didn't publish their results. There were no scientific journals. Newton invented calculus, found the laws of motion, and analyzed the motion of the planets. Then he sat on his discoveries for decades (and only eventually published the Principia because he wanted to build a claim that Leibniz and Hooke had taken ideas from him, rather than the other way around).

    So let's not imagine a golden age when it was OK to be a socially nonconforming geek.

  • This is a kind of inversion of Warhol's idea, that everyone would be famous -- to everyone else -- for fifteen minutes. In the future, maybe everyone will be famous for a long time, but to a limited group.

    Interesting, Neal, but highly dubious. Warhol's prediction that everyone will be universally famous for 15 minutes probably won't actually turn into everyone becoming famous for a long time to a limited group. What is more likely, with the fragmentation of the media, is that everyone will be famous for 1
  • Did Newton (and a whole lot of other people) have a degree?
    • Not only did he graduate from Cambridge, he became the Lucasian Professor, and was eventually called in to help out the Civil Service (run the Mint) partly because of his metallurgical expertise. He was part of the Establishment. And I very much doubt if he was any more eccentric than, say, Poindexter.
  • It was all Leibnitz anyway

  • Eccentricity does not imply genius... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bscott ( 460706 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @12:07AM (#7160413)
    Speaking as someone who lives in Hollywood (where eccentricity is often tolerated entirely too much...), I'm not prepared to accept the assertion that intolerance to nonconformity is denying society the fruits of genius on a significant scale.

    Sure, you're gonna find a "mad" genius or two, whose inability to fit into society leads to isolation, instutionalization or incarceration. And for every one of them you'll find at least a thousand just-plain-whackos. I daresay that we've "lost" more natural math geniuses to them being born as Kalahari Bushmen who never saw a zero in their whole lives, then to over-adherence to any collection of cultural mores.

    The benefits of encouraging a certain level of - call it consistency - more than likely outweigh the detriments. Of course it can go too far; nobody would suggest that dressing a specific way be used as a criteria for hiring in an academic institution, for one example. But asking that the faculty generally refrain from habitually making up nonsense words in ordinary conversation, and that they bathe now and then and try to remember to at least WEAR clothes - I reckon that's a good thing.

  • Newton had his own ideas... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Madcapjack ( 635982 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @12:15AM (#7160450)
    Well, we all admire Newton for his physics and his mathematics. But you don't hear too many people praising his alchemy, his astrology, or his religous/apocalyptic histories. I imagine that his work in these latter three fields would tend to push him to the sidelines of academia. But, that doesn't mean he wouldn't get a position somewhere.
    • Well orcourse in Newton's day those were perfectly normal things for him to be wokring on. Even if we do think them a bit weird today.

      It should also be noted that he did not use a fountin pen, as it was not invented until the 19th century. He used a dip pen, probably a goose quill. They are still used in some places. If done well its amazing to watch.
    • That's not right. Had that part of his work been made public while he was alive, he would have not only lost his job, he may have been executed.

      He kept that stuff a secret, however. He was a secretive person. He kept his calculus secret for over a decade.

  • One of the things Newton didn't do is kiss ass, which seems to be around 80% of the hiring prereq.

    Newton would've joined a dot-com instead.

    OTOH, maybe MIT or CalTech would have hired him. Those institutions still have balls.
  • Not unless the music department needed someone to do some decomposing.

    ba-dum-chisssh
  • and nobody would even realise he's dead!

  • A change: quality not quantity of communication (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The Revolutionary ( 694752 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:05AM (#7161041) Homepage Journal
    Thinking of that time, what I find is perhaps most significant (although perhaps romanticized also) is the climate of scholarly discourse.

    It seems there is something missing today in much of communication, and I am guilty of contributing to this, as I'm sure are many of you. Email, telephone, and perhaps worst of all: chat rooms. All of these things contribute to the attitude of raking our discourse in the mud; we treat it as so common and vulgar, as though it is an ugly tool not an art. We must all take an active role in preserving and promoting that grand and noble thing which is rational dialogue between two human persons.

    Very few of us have the opportunity to particpate in, for example, discourse through publishing scholarly papers, and even for those who do, the whole processes is necessarily exclusive.

    I believe that manual letter writing is perhaps the most rewarding means of communication. Yes, manual letter writing: that thing people do with a real pen and real dead-tree paper, like your mother and aunts and grandmothers did and, if living, probably still do. Our mothers do more to promote an atmosphere affirming the dignity of human dicourse than probably do many of us!

    every letter has a greater sense of importance - It could be weeks before you receive a reply, and how the world can change in that time; the letter is an occasion to "put on your best suit and use your finest china", as it were.

    it is deliberate - You might take a week to ponder and absorb the thoughts of your interlocutor before evening sitting down to write. Writing your response - what must suffice as the only communication between the two of you for perhaps weeks or more - is a task for more than even a single evening. This is no 30 word email that you bang out in as many seconds.

    it necessitates greater attention to quality and clarity - This is a grand occasion. If you do not put forth your best effort, you will regret it immediately. How many of you have thought to yourselves, "I should have said that instead?" Here there is no recourse. You can not call up your acquaintance and offer a clarification or warning before it is read; you can not send off a follow-up email to explain yourself that evening.

    it provides for cooler heads - You may be steaming-mad now, but consider how horrible you will feel in many days or even weeks when you receive a reply. Oh, how foolish you will feel when you must read your brash and irrational words quoted to you then!

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