高中英语 晨读英语美文60篇 38 The Shift in The Methodology of Discovery素材

The Shift in The Methodology of Discovery

He changed the future without ever winning a vote or commanding an army. All Albert Einstein did was having an idea.

It’s not a particularly easy one to grasp in all its ramifications,

but the basic insight he expressed in his 1905 paper on special relat ivity is almost childlike in its simplicity.

And yet it ushered in a new golden age of physics

and did much to shape the course of the 20th century.

It also transformed the way the future is made:

not with wars and revolutions but wit h scientific insights.

That much is still true.

But it is history that science precedes

at the hands of the occasional lone genius.

These days, vast networks of laboratories sponsored by government

are all pushing to find the new thing.

Discovery and invention,

in the developed countries at least, have become regularized.

The insights of individuals are still important, of cou rse,

but the overall effort relies less on any one genius.

“In the late 19th century, you had predominantly the private inventor,”says Yale historian Daniel Kevles.

“No w you have the organized inventor.

Scientific fields are crowded with geniuses.