Too Much To Learn In Science

I’m taking a class called Dynamics of Complex Fluids this semester, taught by Prof. Kenneth Schweizer. It’s a class about how mechanical forces affect colloids or polymers in liquids. Most of the dynamics, it turns out, were developed 50 years ago.

This made me wonder how much we can learn from five decades of work. In particular, how much time it would take to train a new hydrogel scientist.

The “Scientist Training” Problem

The average life expectancy in developed countries is slowing edging over 80 years, but most scientists (PhD in science or engineering) only graduate at 30-32 years of age. I see two problems from this system.

From society’s standpoint, it takes 30 years to produce a new scientist. Most people retire in their 60s, so the scientist will only be active for 30 years. This is approximately a 1:1 return on time invested. Admittedly, we do not know how much the scientist will achieve in 30 years. Perhaps their achievements would bring tangible benefits to our world that are worth more than 30 years of time.

The second problem is the quality of education. As alluded to earlier, most of the science was developed 50 years ago. The average PhD is 4-5 years. That means we need to compress 10x (five decades into five years) information into the young scientists’ mind. How much can one person remember in this short time span? Not much, at least for me personally. There’s so much to remember that by the time I’m midway through the next semester, I already forgot everything I learned in the previous semester.

I believe I am not alone in these experiences. Many young students in secondary or tertiary education say they “returned their knowledge” to their teachers after final exams. It’s also common to see students dumping their textbooks outside a national examination hall because we “don’t need” it anymore.

Is there a way to solve this problem where students become well-learned at earlier ages? I thought of three potential solutions and explain them below.

A Practical (yet unpopular) Solution

There’s a famous saying that goes, “stand on the shoulders of giants”. It’s the caption of Google Scholar. Indeed, we need to learn from the experiences and mistakes of those who came before. This way we can save time instead of repeating mistakes.

But when you need to compress knowledge by 10x, I don’t believe it is practical to learn from the beginning.

Therefore, the solution is to memorize and assume.

Instead of learning from scratch or deriving all the equations, memorize the final forms of the fundamental equations. Assume they are correct. Doing this will save about 20-30 years of knowledge. It’s reasonable because the 1950-1980s were hindered by slow communication, thus scientific exchange was also relatively slow compared to the modern world. In my opinion, it is safe to gloss over this time period and begin by memorizing the final works in late 1980s.

The Right (but impractical) Solution

The right way to learn knowledge is to understand everything from the basics. This way we can ensure the scientist has a strong foundation and is able to invent new derivations themselves. Of course, I recognize that this is the proper way to learn, but I question its practicality. In this situation, we need the student to extend their PhD to 7~8 years (from a 10x compression of knowledge between 1950-2020s; seven decades to seven years). Unless the average life expectancy is over 110 years old, I cannot see anything better than a 1:1 return on time invested.

The Segmented (potentially strife) Solution

Readers may question why I am only comparing time compression to a PhD education. Children start school as young as 7 years old, so I should begin my comparison there. This is not reasonable. We cannot expect a seven year old to learn complex topics like hydrogel science. Here, I argue for a segmented approach to education.

Segmented means that children are assigned to specialities from the beginning of their education. This statement sounds ridiculous and could create strife between parents and the education system, but keep reading for the logical argument.

Previously, I claimed that we need a 7-8 year education based on 10x knowledge compression. That was for PhD students in their 20s who have developed minds. Let’s think about primary school children who are starting their first education. If the only subject they had to study was science, and perhaps even specialized into only chemistry, how many years would it take for them to reach the same proficiency as an undergraduate student? In your thoughts, assume that other classes like literature, history, sports are removed. I’d say it would take five years to reach undergraduate level, and another three years to reach graduate level. That makes these young adults around 15 years old.

Clearly the benefit to society is scientist-grade students produced in only 15 years time, compared to the previous 30. We would have achieved 100% efficiency from halving training time.

But we stripped these children of their freedom of choice. They will not have the opportunity to experience various fields, coming to a natural choice of their future career. If an education minister were to announce this project, the citizens would definitely raise an uproar.

What Is Your Solution?

I’ve discussed three approaches to solving the scientist training problem. Each has its logical strengths and unfavorable reasonings. I’m not an education expert from any ministry, so I’m sharing my thoughts to our newsletter subscribers to pool our ideas together.

If you’ve stayed reading this far, would you hit ‘reply’ to let me know your solution?