Newton’s distaste for publishing
As recounted in Steven Heard’s excellent book, publishing scientific results only began formally around 1660 with the establishment of the Royal Society. Prior to this, scientists typically kept their results secret for subsequent, proprietary use.
The establishment of the Transactions of the Royal Society in 1660 changed all that. It enabled scientists like Hobbes, Boyle and Bacon to report their findings to a wider set of readers via a reliable outlet, thus allowing others to build on their work.
Notably, around this time Isaac Newton resisted the new culture of openness, preferring to write as obscurely as possible. Despite the simplicity and elegance of his ideas, he chose to describe them using as much technical jargon and as many specialist terms as possible.
It is unclear exactly why Newton did this.
He clearly needed to plant his groundbreaking ideas in the Transactions to preserve his legacy.
His deliberate obfuscation may have been to prevent rivals from quickly taking obvious next steps. Newton himself wrote of a desire to prevent less accomplished scientists from bothering him with correspondence.
However, a final possibility is that Newton, through his own (highly irrational) insecurities, felt the need to come across as (superficially) more intelligent. And to do this he (erroneously) felt he had to make his ideas less intelligible than necessary.
I worry that similar latent insecurities might afflict many in modern AI. I suspect that, if these insecurities could be addressed, the quality of scientific writing, and AI communication more generally, would increase immeasurably.
