Hacker News Reader

typically only happened when older scientists retired

There is a much less subtle quote attributed to Max Planck that summarizes this idea: Science progresses funeral by funeral.

View on HN

I had actually written "died off" rather than "retired", as that's how I recalled it being stated when I read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. But then I couldn't recall a good reason why they had to die, and not just retire, so I changed the wording. But maybe even retired tenured scientists exert too much influence.

I love the Max Planck quote, though. I hadn't heard it before.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com