> Similarly during the scientific revolution it was mostly hobbyists aristocrats that drove it, those who had the means to support themselves while doing free research.

I think this is overexaggerated in the popular consciousness. Most of the famous intellectuals weren't really big aristocrats. Yes they mostly didn't come from dirt poor peasant or serf families. But they also weren't, with some exceptions, highest nobility. It was much more common that they secured funding through patronage from or got hired by the aristocrats. The aristocrats didn't really do the hard work themselves, again with some exceptions.

Isn’t the idea of an aristocratic scientists with a lower class sidekick (actual scientist) doing all the work part of the trope, though? Actually, come to think of it, I’m not sure I can come up with any examples. But, I thought that was the whole thing.

One example [1] of a group that was doing stuff outside universities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Society_of_Birmingham

Indeed, the way I expressed it was an oversimplification. I generally wanted to make the point that they were people that weren’t forced to have a tiring full-time job just to get by, and that research was not really their job, with patronage as middle ground.

I think that's also not fully true. The trope is that the rich nobles were swimming in money and in their boredom they just tinkered and did hobby stuff and then this resulted in the discoveries.

But for example Galileo from Wikipedia:

> Three of Galileo's five siblings survived infancy. The youngest, Michelangelo (or Michelagnolo), also became a lutenist and composer who added to Galileo's financial burdens for the rest of his life.[22] Michelangelo was unable to contribute his fair share of their father's promised dowries to their brothers-in-law, who later attempted to seek legal remedies for payments due. Michelangelo also occasionally had to borrow funds from Galileo to support his musical endeavours and excursions. These financial burdens may have contributed to Galileo's early desire to develop inventions that would bring him additional income.[23]

Or Kepler:

> His grandfather, Sebald Kepler, had been Lord Mayor of the city. By the time Johannes was born, the Kepler family fortune was in decline. His father, Heinrich Kepler, earned a precarious living as a mercenary, and he left the family when Johannes was five years old. He was believed to have died in the Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands. His mother, Katharina Guldenmann, an innkeeper's daughter, was a healer and herbalist.

I think the pattern is less that they were so free from concern that they started to research, and more that they worked hard to get funded. And often incidental jobs, like calculating easter and astrology stuff (Kepler in Prague) and to the science as a bonus. Similar to how artists were mostly commissioned (like Leonardo) but also did their own "passion projects".

The typical intellectual was not some duke or baron or huge lord or the son of such. They had to be somewhat stable of course, but that's also true today. Today's professors also don't typically come from abject poverty.

Thanks for elaborating on it, it’s good to learn. The trope though is more about the Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution and Royal Society era. But yeah they were never actual nobility, just upper-middle class. And indeed during the Renaissance and early modern period it was much more about patronage. A number of Greek philosophers were also wealthy, although others were simply frugal.

Nevertheless, my general point stands in that their research was almost never their job and they needed other means to support themselves, just like artists. And this was true throughout history until the paradigm shift described in OP’s article.

> it’s more like Nietzsche working as an undertaker

Where is this coming from? Nietzsche was a university professor. He did however serve as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian War.

You are right, not sure where I misremembered that from.