"I wrote somewhere during the Cold War that I sometimes wish the Iron Curtain were much taller than it is, so that you could see whether the development of science with no communication was parallel on the two sides. In this case it certainly wasn't"
About this Quote
Gold’s provocation lands because it treats the Cold War not as moral melodrama but as a nasty natural experiment: what happens to “science” when you cut the wires between communities that claim universality. The Iron Curtain, in Western rhetoric, was usually a symbol of oppression and ignorance. Gold flips it into an instrument of measurement. Make it taller, he jokes, and you can run a controlled study on human knowledge itself.
The wit is doing serious work. Science markets itself as convergent: give smart people the same problems and they’ll tend toward the same truths. Gold’s wish tests that comforting story. If parallel development were inevitable, isolation would merely slow things down. His punchline - “In this case it certainly wasn’t” - punctures the myth. The subtext is that science isn’t just equations; it’s an ecosystem of conferences, peer review, shared instruments, argument, reputation, and cross-pollination. Break those channels and you don’t get two synchronized timelines. You get divergent priorities, blind spots hardened into doctrine, and whole research programs that never quite happen.
Contextually, Gold is also speaking as someone steeped in mid-century, big-ego, high-stakes scientific culture, when geopolitics steered funding and secrecy distorted incentives. The line reads like a warning in the form of a quip: isolation doesn’t preserve purity; it breeds weirdness. Communication isn’t a nicety added after truth is discovered - it’s the machinery that makes “truth” socially durable.
The wit is doing serious work. Science markets itself as convergent: give smart people the same problems and they’ll tend toward the same truths. Gold’s wish tests that comforting story. If parallel development were inevitable, isolation would merely slow things down. His punchline - “In this case it certainly wasn’t” - punctures the myth. The subtext is that science isn’t just equations; it’s an ecosystem of conferences, peer review, shared instruments, argument, reputation, and cross-pollination. Break those channels and you don’t get two synchronized timelines. You get divergent priorities, blind spots hardened into doctrine, and whole research programs that never quite happen.
Contextually, Gold is also speaking as someone steeped in mid-century, big-ego, high-stakes scientific culture, when geopolitics steered funding and secrecy distorted incentives. The line reads like a warning in the form of a quip: isolation doesn’t preserve purity; it breeds weirdness. Communication isn’t a nicety added after truth is discovered - it’s the machinery that makes “truth” socially durable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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