Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos

by M. Mitchell Waldrop

Even more distressing was his sense that things were only getting worse for the younger generation of scientists. Judging from what he'd seen of the ones coming through Los Alamos, they were impressively bright and energetic—but conditioned by a culture that was enforcing more and more intellectual fragmentation all the time. Institutionally (as opposed to politically), universities are incredibly conservative places. Young Ph.D.'s don't dare break the mold. They have to spend the better part of a decade in the desperate pursuit of tenure in an existing department, which means that they had better be doing research that the department's tenure committee will recognize. Otherwise, they're going to hear something like, "Joe, you've been working hard over there with the biologists. But how does that show you're a leader over here in physics?" Older researchers, meanwhile, have to spend all their waking hours in the desperate pursuit of grants to pay for their research, which means that they had better tailor their projects to fit into categories that the funding agencies will recognize. Otherwise, they're going to hear something like, "Joe, this is a great idea—too bad it's not our department." And everybody has to get papers accepted for publication in established scholarly journals—which are almost invariably going to restrict themselves to papers in a recognized specialty.