[Sethomas]

Re American culture and science:

The purported American character is based on cleverness and industry. Science is embraced as a tool to use those things. Science for science's sake is too close to the detested image of men wearing tweed in ivory towers.

America's technological role models aren't typically scientists. Thomas Edison had a brilliantly scientific mind driving his horrible personality, but really he was just putting to use scientific ideas that had been finalized decades prior, namely Maxwell's Laws. Inventors are patriots, scientists are untrustworthy. Even during the Space Race, Americans would point to foreigners as the paragon scientists. You could forgive Einstein and Von Braun for pie-in-the-sky interests because of their adorable European accents, and it was Oppenheimer and NASA that glorified their achievements anyways. That is, science is something that you outsource so that inventors can do the important stuff.

Consider the fact that Richard Feynman tops the list of the most important physicists from 1950-2000 by many reckonings, while Stephen Hawking doesn't fall in the top ten. Both of them wrote books for a general audience. How many more Americans have heard of Hawking than Feynman, though? It's like we find the idea of a home-grown physics genius something to be ashamed of.

And of course, it's sad that we shifted the economy from invention to usury, so the silver lining of the American character has fallen from the sky. Since we don't invent things any more, science is a rather silly thing to bring up in polite conversation.