It's been long well established that in certain fields -- e.g. mathematics -- one's main career achievement, if it occurs at all, occurs early, where as in other fields -- e.g. philosophy -- the career achievement may come late in life, often as the culmination of a long process. My question is this: Have there been any studies comparing the quality of life of academics, given this difference in expected age of achievement: i.e. how do you feel about yourself in general if it is expected that you will achieve young or achieve old?

Steve

Steve Fuller
Professor of Sociology
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom
Phone +44 2476 523 940
<https://mywebmail.warwick.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/staff/academicstaff/sfuller/fullers_index/>
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/socio ... lers_index
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~sysdt/Index.html <http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~sysdt/Index.html>
BLOG: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/swfuller/ <http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/swfuller/>
NEW BOOK: The Sociology of Intellectual Life -- The Career of the Mind In and Around the Academy (Sage). Save 50% at www.sagepub.co.uk <http://www.sagepub.co.uk/> quoting promo code UK09AF024.
E-book for US$40: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc ... ook229759& <https://mywebmail.warwick.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.uk.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book229759%26>

Hi Steve,

This is a very good question. Most of the studies that relate age to
productivity have not posed the question of feelings attached to it and
quality of life. You are right, it is a matter for concern in Psychology
of Science and Technology.

There are very old studies about age and productivity, mostly in
Sociology of Science. One of them by Knorr-Cetina, K., Mittermeir, R.,
Aichholzer, G., & Waller, G., that also appeared later as a section of a
chapter in Andrews, F. M., & Aichholzer, G. (1979). Scientific
productivity, the effectiveness of research groups in six countries.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Myself in 1991, published an article on Scientific Communication in
which we pair seniority and productivity. We found out that although the
majority of scientists publish 2 articles a year average, this doesn't
hold after 25 years of academic life. (Liberman S. Sofía, K. B. Wolf y
Petra Seligman Costos de la transferencia Internacional del conocimiento
científico. Ciencia y Desarrollo CONACYT. Nov-dic. vol. XVII, num. 101.
1991. 56-66).

From all the years I have been doing research I have the feeling that
it depends on the subject and that there are differences between fields.

We should start a topic at the forum.

Sofia Liberman
Posgrado.
Facultad de Psicología.
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Hi, All ~

This issue is, as always, complex. Although mathematicians often start
making contributions at relatively young ages, their career peaks - the
age at which they do their best work - is about the same as physicists and
chemists. An average across 133 eminent mathematicians was 38.8 (see my
1991 paper on career landmarks in Developmental Psychology). Moreover,
they continue being productive in the post-peak period, their last major
contribution appearing slightly later than those of notable physicists and
chemists. For the 133 eminent mathematicians, the average was 53.4. Hence,
mathematicians can still expect do make major contributions over a
considerable period of their lives. Euler was still productive late in
life, even after going blind. I think this fact is overlooked because of
the distortion introduced by the Fields Medal, the supposed "Nobel Prize
of Mathematics." It has an age limit imposition of 40, which actually
renders it an early career award. Andrew Wiles was even too old!

Another tidbit: When scientists are surveyed about their work, they have
an intriguing response to the question "What is your best contribution?"
They most likely say "What I'm currently working on." Like Einstein
thinking that his Unified Field Theory was the culmination of his career!
In other words, there is a certain amount of self-deception involved. From
a subjective perspective, a scientist can see his or her work as building
up their past work and therefore necessarily better than their earlier
work, whereas from the objective perspective of colleagues, the judgment
may be "same old, same old" or even worse ("the old man has lost it").

The case of philosophers is more complex because of the least-publishable
unit in their field. At least until recently it was the philosophical
treatise, not single journal articles. These take a considerable amount of
time to assemble. Locke worked on his Essay Concerning Human Understanding
for almost 20 years. Of course, this is not the only factor. Sometimes it
takes a thinker some time to come up with a comprehensive alternative to
previous philosophical systems. Like Kant, submerged in Leibnizian-
Wolffian philosophy until Hume shook him out of his dogmatic slumber. A
decade later, at age 57, he comes out of the first of his three great
Critiques (I happen to be finishing up the third critique right now -
anybody want to know about the problems with teleological judgment? Didn't
think so!). His last critique appeared when he was 56. Although these
three works represent his central contributions, it is important to point
out that Kant was doing significant work prior to his critical philosophy -
including in physics! One of the latter even won a prize from the Berlin
Academy. So it's not that philosophers sit on their hands thinking, "Darn,
I'm not old enough to write my philosophical masterpiece yet!" They work
up to it.

By the way, I'm now working on a chapter for a book on The Psychology of
Mathematics in which I discuss whether mathematicians are the lyric poets
of the sciences. Not only are they both able to launch their careers at
relatively young ages (see Chatterton and Galois) but they even have
shorter life expectancies! Alas! There are too many reasons why this might
be so, but some may have to do with quality of life issues.

~ Best, Dean