I'm not sure mathematicians would agree that they're experiencing a great stagnation, I get the impression they see their field as accelerating.
"when you live in an age of excess where information flow costs nothing, it's sometimes much harder for someone to be easily and critically known as 'the best'."
Agreed, I think this is a big part of what's going on.
Yeah, Mathematics is the odd one out often in sciences where it's able to build on itself but doesn't require too much in the way of devices or accoutrements. The new acceleration is also partly with the growth of computational approaches from what I know, which is interesting and has a historical parallel to the physical sciences.
"The interesting looking though is that Spengler could credibly articulate that Tolstoy and Karl Marx were world changing figures on par with Plato, he wrote that before WWI had started, not with the benefit of historical hindsight, but in the literal heat of the moment."
I'm curious if there were others that made the same prediction. Or if there were others making different predictions. In 100 years we'll be able to look back and find a bunch of people made correct predictions now, but we'll need to be careful to re-read this post as well to make sure we remember that society as a whole was not confident in those predictions.
Also, were people in full agreement with his predictions about Tolstoy and Marx? Or did they just read and think "yeah, maybe" and move on?
I'm not sure mathematicians would agree that they're experiencing a great stagnation, I get the impression they see their field as accelerating.
"when you live in an age of excess where information flow costs nothing, it's sometimes much harder for someone to be easily and critically known as 'the best'."
Agreed, I think this is a big part of what's going on.
Yeah, Mathematics is the odd one out often in sciences where it's able to build on itself but doesn't require too much in the way of devices or accoutrements. The new acceleration is also partly with the growth of computational approaches from what I know, which is interesting and has a historical parallel to the physical sciences.
"The interesting looking though is that Spengler could credibly articulate that Tolstoy and Karl Marx were world changing figures on par with Plato, he wrote that before WWI had started, not with the benefit of historical hindsight, but in the literal heat of the moment."
I'm curious if there were others that made the same prediction. Or if there were others making different predictions. In 100 years we'll be able to look back and find a bunch of people made correct predictions now, but we'll need to be careful to re-read this post as well to make sure we remember that society as a whole was not confident in those predictions.
Also, were people in full agreement with his predictions about Tolstoy and Marx? Or did they just read and think "yeah, maybe" and move on?
Anton Wilson I know well but did not know about Karl. Thank you, very interesting!