Collecting the tools
What you need to learn before starting your research gets larger all the time.
Our astronomer is working on two pieces of research, not exactly at the same time but switching from one to the other as ideas appear or opportunities arise. The first is an analysis of data on the brightness of stars, and is pretty straightforward. That is, the data and tools he uses are familiar and the results, while surprising in some ways, come more or less directly.
The second is much less well-defined. It can be expressed as something like, “If I apply this kind of mathematics to this part of physics, does anything interesting come out?” The main difficulty he’s faced so far is that both the math and the physics involved are far from anything he’s worked with or published on. He has to learn two esoteric subjects, and learn them well enough to do original work with them. As much as he likes to learn things, this has been a slow process. He says he is not yet to the point where he can tell if the question makes sense, much less answer it.
Well, that’s not how most of science is done nowadays, if only because he’s spent years on the project (off and on) without any publications from it or grant funding for it. But it highlights the fact that there are possibly useful areas of background knowledge that he didn’t see in graduate school. And indeed, there are areas he has needed in order to write his papers that didn’t appear in his formal education. Even confining oneself to astronomy proper (if that’s possible), graduate school is not long enough to collect all the tools that scientists use. One learns enough to work in one’s subfield.
Of course with thousands of scientists working continually to push back the boundaries of knowledge, reaching those boundaries will take longer. That’s been happening for a long time. One result is that many specialized subjects and techniques, especially in mathematics, are no longer taught. (Our astronomer is particularly fond of hyperbolic sines, now rarely seen in class.)
Another result is increased specialization. Few astronomers work in a field as large as “stars” or “galaxies;” they will work on a specific type of Cataclysmic Variable star, or a subclass of elliptical galaxy, or a type of supernova.
Specialization shows up also in the different techniques required in any particular investigation, so that the author lists for scientific papers grow ever longer. One- or two-author papers are now rare; having dozens of authors listed under the title is normal.
This is all frustrating, but the process is not new. It does present an opportunity for those who have the time and the inclination to learn a subject well outside their own area: one can, possibly, make connections that no one else has thought of. It’s not guaranteed, though, and maybe their only return for a large investment of time and effort will be learning something.
