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MichaelVassar comments on For progress to be by accumulation and not by random walk, read great books - Less Wrong
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I mentioned biology and economics, philosophy and psychology. I could go farther if desired.
However, really, since academia promotes reading old books, I'm happy to place the probablistic burden of the claim that academia is mad on it.
That doesn't seem so for mathematics, physics, chemistry...the hard sciences in general. It may be an ornament to one's education to read Euclid, Newton, and Einstein, but it is not necessary. The books that endure in these fields are the exceptionally good textbooks rather than the original works.
Biology is the hot science right now. Knowledge about evolution was going to be very superficial until genetics came along. Now that tools are available, we are learning all sorts of things at an amazing clip.