Matteo Cantiello edited untitled.tex  almost 9 years ago

Commit id: 6446e4df145060cd3bfae8b4863cf4992d1a0af3

deletions | additions      

       

\item Science and technology increasingly affect modern society.   \end{enumerate}  The first trend is easy to understand. Let's think of the cumulative knowledge of humankind as a sphere. Scientists work at the surface "\href{http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/}{pushing the boundary}", discovery increases the volume of knowledge. As the sphere's volume grows, so does its surface area; this requires an ever increasing number of researchers to tessellate the expanding cutting-edge of science. Moreover, contrary to a few hundred years ago when the sphere of knowledge was so small that a single person polymath  could master large chunks of it, nowadays no human can understand the details of more than a few subtopics of research. To capture the bigger picture and understand very complex research questions, collaborative efforts combining together a number of highly specific expertises are required.