Now we come to the less important Nobel Prizes; Literature today, Peace tomorrow and Economics on Monday. I see a clear hierarchy of “nobility” for the 6 awards:
- Medicine or Physiology
- Chemistry
- Physics
- Literature
- Economics, and
- Peace.
The first two still remain fairly true to Alfred Nobel’s intentions. I put Medicine on a higher plane of “nobility” than Chemistry but would have no great quarrel with the order being reversed. Physics definitely has become less “noble”. The whole field has been somewhat degraded by the advent of Big Science and the use of massive “sledgehammers” to try and hammer the universe into submission. But this approach only gives incremental (and often infinitesimal) advances and represent no breakthroughs in thought. I suspect that the real advances will still come from individuals and not by the bureaucratic approach to Big Science where the concept seems to be that advances are directly proportional to the amount of money spent.
I used to believe in the Literature Prize but of late it has become a little subservient to political correctness.
The two “base” prizes with little trace of any nobility are those for Economics and for Peace. Economics is more about social behaviour and there is very little “science” about it. Economic theories have – at best – been of short lived utility. At worst they have led to global crises.
The Peace prize, of course, has just become a nonsense and brings disgrace to Nobel’s intentions.
Tags: Alfred Nobel, Big Science, Nobel prize
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