The Gentleman Scientist

He built a world worth living in.

In the past half-century, federally funded science has yielded increasingly meager returns. Experiments grow more expensive by the year, and fewer original discoveries are made. The replication crisis has become infamous for its ubiquity. The current state of particle physics provides a good example of these problems. The necessity for larger and larger cyclotrons has precipitated increasingly long periods in which theoreticians must develop their theories without the ability to test them with experiments. It is mainly for this reason that we have no physics beyond the Standard Model. In the biological sciences, there is an increasing number of questions which cannot be answered due to political constraints. In all fields, there is a pronounced aversion to long-term thinking, since the funding of experiments is tied to the four-year election cycle. It is not hard to see a creeping intellectual stagnation and the abandonment of the scientific mindset for that of the team player, the organization man. In order to preserve the integrity of science, and continue the search for truth, one must begin to look elsewhere.

A cursory review of history shows that many of the most famous discoveries of the Scientific Age were made by gentleman scientists. Even if such scientists worked for universities, their science was done on their own time, and was in many cases self-funded. We will now discuss a few of such gentlemen scientists, and the research centers they created. Charles Darwin may be the most famous example of a gentleman scientist. His voyages were financed by his father, and his magnum opus took decades to write. His accomplishments required long-term financial stability, and unconditional support that would be almost impossible to find in a university today. While Thomas Edison is known today mainly as an inventor, his research center at Menlo Park was also a center of fundamental research, particularly in the theory of radio, and the science of materials. Due to the lack of academic and technical specialists in America at that time, he found it necessary to import large numbers of European craftsmen and scientists, including Nikola Tesla. Menlo Park was funded through the proceeds generated from patents, an interesting model for the vast majority of us who are not independently wealthy. It is also possible for gentleman scientists to use their operations for military strategy. Alfred Lee Loomis, a gentleman scientist known for his efforts in ultrasound and radar, scaled up his efforts during the second world war to create radar units for airplanes. His research center in his mansion in Tuxedo Park was financed by his endeavors in the stock market. Like Edison, he found it necessary to employ many European researchers.

There are several lessons we can learn from these examples. The gentleman scientist’s greatest advantage is the ability to investigate and challenge an intellectual status quo without danger to his reputation or livelihood. He also enjoys unlimited freedom to hire the best brains in the world. This is especially important for Americans, as the educational system in this country has consistently lagged behind those of the advanced nations of Europe. It is not necessary to inherit great wealth to become a gentleman scientist, as it is possible to finance research with the proceeds from inventions. Conventional wisdom holds that since the cost of research has increased exponentially, it is no longer possible for scientists to work without federal funding. However, this idea has several flaws.

In recent decades, the cost of scientific equipment has declined greatly. Moore’s Law has led to an exponential decrease in the cost of computing power. A quick perusal of government auction websites shows that last year’s lab equipment is available at pennies on the dollar. Even more equipment becomes available day by day as increasing numbers of universities declare bankruptcy. It has also never been easier to access preexisting data. Space probes and other instrumentation have produced far more data than scientists have been able to analyze. Most government generated scientific data is available on archival websites through wget or an FTP connection. In short, equipping a laboratory with good equipment has never been easier.

In order to become a gentleman scientist, it would be helpful to learn certain subjects. Firstly, it is important to know how to access the archival resources available on websites such as NASA.gov. I have found this to be easiest through command-line tools in the Linux shell. Most scientific papers are also available online. It is critical to know what the free alternatives to expensive software such as MATLAB are. There are open-source Python analogs for most scientific software, so Python is the most useful programming language for a gentleman scientist. Single-board computers are also a great way to gather data, as they can interface your computer with a plethora of different sensors. Therefore, Linux, Python and some basic embedded systems programming should be enough to get started.

If the current state of government-funded research persists, scientists will find their approved areas of investigation slowly but steadily eroded, and they will become little more than functionaries with no freedom of their own. Trust in science will disappear, as the public will surely see that governments use the rubber stamp approval of such scientists to justify their policies. Under such circumstances, a return to a medieval level of society would be all too certain. It is therefore the duty of all with technical skills to start doing science as quickly as possible. In the Heroic Age of Invention, most science will be performed by families who have established enterprises lucrative enough that they have time to spare. Scientists without such enterprises might work for patrons who need their work to further their enterprises. This gentleman scientist appears to have made quite a bit of progress. He is alive today, and may be reading this right now.

.