My favorite example is Gregor Mendel. He wasn’t a scientist. He was a monk with no degrees of any kind. But he did science—legendary science—which means he actually was a scientist.
“This germ theory nonsense violates the academic truth of spontaneous generation and just sounds like crackpottery, now if you excuse me I need to drill into a man’s skull to balance his humors.” - Academia in the 1700’s
To my understanding, he also very conveniently fudged a few of his experiments so that they would align with his other ones and ended up embellishing his final result,
but also if he hadn’t done that he wouldn’t have discovered Mendelian genes? Not sure if that’s a win or a loss for science.
My favorite example is Gregor Mendel. He wasn’t a scientist. He was a monk with no degrees of any kind. But he did science—legendary science—which means he actually was a scientist.
I’d say he was a scientist - just not part of academia :)
We have to separate science and academia, especially when we talk about the past.
Damn right…
“This germ theory nonsense violates the academic truth of spontaneous generation and just sounds like crackpottery, now if you excuse me I need to drill into a man’s skull to balance his humors.” - Academia in the 1700’s
To my understanding, he also very conveniently fudged a few of his experiments so that they would align with his other ones and ended up embellishing his final result, but also if he hadn’t done that he wouldn’t have discovered Mendelian genes? Not sure if that’s a win or a loss for science.
damn never meet ur heroes