Characters
Scientist (Ragnar)
Historian (Seer)
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Scientist
I was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. Not because I pulled off a paradigm shift. But because I was productive. Science advances gradually through baby steps. Not by Revolutions.
Historian
That is what you believe, so it is true. For you.
Scientist (annoyed)
Aah the paradigms you speak of. They have no real meaning. Paradigms can be defined in so many ways that the cease to explain scientific progress or knowledge. Your so-called historical theories are dangerous.
Historian
How So?
Scientist
Like inspiring young scientists to develop new theories. My own best student published several papers in leading journals while a graduate student. He was written about in The New York Times. But then, because he read your books, he put his career in danger. So what if he had not read your books? What if he thought that he could make discoveries within the paradigm that we already had? He would have continued to be productive. And now maybe he would be a tenured professor. Something I always wanted more than anything, to have one of my graduate students become a professor. You presented him a model of science that requires too much sacrifice. And he manifested it.
Historian
Perhaps it was the state of science that caused your student to sacrifice his career in exactly the way that he did.
Scientist
But what it wasn’t?
Historian
What if it was.
Scientist
I don’t believe in the existence scientific revolutions. Review committees are the masters of science’s fate, not lone wolves or renegades. Geniuses are historians’ creations to make their subject more interesting than it really is.
Historian
You may be right. I am only the historian. I have read the dustiest of books. And I have groped to find historical patterns. And I may have been wrong.
Scientist
What did you say?