Some time ago I made a parallel between academic mathematics (and science) and the revolution against academic painting, aka the impressionists.
I said… but here is gpt-4 via phind.com on this:
“A more abstract connection can be drawn from a philosophical perspective. In a paper titled “Boring mathematics, artistes pompiers and impressionists” by Marius Buliga, the author equates the evolution of mathematics with the revolution of the impressionist movement arxiv.org. Buliga suggests that just as the impressionists broke away from traditional art norms to create something genuinely new, mathematics also needs a similar revolution to break away from established routines and conventions to bring forth innovative and exciting ideas ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org.
In the same vein, the author suggests that the growing influence of the internet and digital technologies may be the catalyst for such a revolution in mathematics, much like the Salon des Refusés was a platform for the impressionists ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org“
You know that I pursued this in practice until recently, with mixed results,
So what’s next? Is there anything to learn from the analogy after the impressionist revolution started to have (a very mixed) success?
Now we are close to the last consequences of the disaster in research brought by decades of self-serving hype and self-destructive policies of the boomers age.
Let me say that “boomer” is an abstract concept which is definitely not used in an ageist sense. Ok.
The academic research of risk avoiding, problem solving, bean counters (if you prefer) of any age, convinced the larger world that it is not worthy, or even worse, that it is only one of the pillars of the “system is good enough as it is” point of view.
Politicians (including academic managers) jump at the conclusion that the academic research system is not useful. There is no cognitive dissonance in their minds about the fact that the system promoted by them, previously, is also on paper the most successful ever. There are now more articles than ever before and everybody runs to submit in better and better journals so that the rankings of institutions improve more and more. But what is obtained? Bigger institutions obtain bigger ratings and in the same time most of this research is trivial, risk averse and not even correct as expected.
In the post-impressionistic world the academic painting survived, but reduced and equated with conformism, niches of government funding warm positions and use for the countries need to manifest acceptable ideas about themselves.
Likewise, I expect that the worse of the academic research will last the most in the academic system, until it will regress to the equivalent of court artists for the glory of the local kings.
It will not be nice to see, is there something somebody can do?
Yes, I appeal to you, early retired because you made your f… y.. money, put humans passionate by research back in the loop. Experiment to find a solution before we are left with either toothpaste researchers or police people, both not creative enough.
chorasimilarity 