How do scientists from the past differ from scientist in this century?

Question: How do scientists from the past differ from scientist in this century?
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Asked by anon-129382 to Megan, Mzamo, Ola, Olivia, Weiyi on 14 Nov 2016.
- Ola Michalec answered on 14 Nov 2016:
  
  Hello, in the past century it was “fashionable” for every science to be “reductionist” and “rational”- e.g. we thought we could reduce complex human behaviours to formulas. And assume that humans make economic decisions purely on logic.
  
  Now, we’re appreciating the complexity of social systems more and realise that humans aren’t always rational – there are more things to us – emotions, societal pressures, subconscious etc. We now appreciate that we need to look at one research question from various sides to understand it better. That’s why there is a tendency in sciences to go interdisciplinary! E.g. climate change requires answers from ecologists, chemists, psyhologists, economists etc
- Megan Seymour answered on 14 Nov 2016:
  
  Ola is right, the way we think about research has changed a lot.
  
  But also the equipment we use has changed a lot too! For example, within my area (chemistry) entire fields exist that weren’t possible before- like now, using specialist equipment, we can completely remove all oxygen from our reactions to make compounds that can’t exist in the presence of oxygen, so could never have been made in the past.
  
  In terms of the actual scientists themselves and how they have changed, the first scientists were mostly very rich white men who had the time and money to do their own research. Thankfully today our community of scientists is made up of pretty normal people because education and science funding is available to everyone.

Question: How do scientists from the past differ from scientist in this century?

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