Understanding the history of science gives a sense how progress works when dealing with things extremely complex .
Here are 3 good starting points.
1. The little book of psychology (penguin randomhouse) charts the important milestones and people in psyc. (Michael Lewis's Undoing Project not many like but it shows why understanding complex non obvious things take time)
2. Faraday and Maxwell by Nancy Forbes charts how long and why it took long to stumble upon EM field theories.
3. Infinite Powers by Steven Stogratz charts the history of calculus. Which shows why it took thousands of years to get to Newton's Laws.
Textbooks present the math without showing people the journey. Psychology and Sociology are going through those same moments Physics and Maths witnessed when new discoveries suddenly start exploding.
Super cool, I've never thought about it this way before. Having read about this stuff somewhat intensively, it just goes to show how many blind spots I have.
Here are 3 good starting points.
1. The little book of psychology (penguin randomhouse) charts the important milestones and people in psyc. (Michael Lewis's Undoing Project not many like but it shows why understanding complex non obvious things take time)
2. Faraday and Maxwell by Nancy Forbes charts how long and why it took long to stumble upon EM field theories.
3. Infinite Powers by Steven Stogratz charts the history of calculus. Which shows why it took thousands of years to get to Newton's Laws.
Textbooks present the math without showing people the journey. Psychology and Sociology are going through those same moments Physics and Maths witnessed when new discoveries suddenly start exploding.