The direction in fields like math and physics seems to be overwhelmingly in the direction of massive collaboration, and Symbols can be effective ways of organizing collective action on a hard problem.
Counterargument: both of these fields seem to have started producing actually-useful things at a much slower rate around the same time the shift toward large collaborations happened. Some people claim that the problems became harder in a way which required more people, but this does not seem more likely than theories in which the causal arrow goes the other way or is thoroughly confounded. There does seem to have been a more general cultural shift involved, and it’s not clear that the large collaborations are actually better for progress as opposed to better for publishing high-profile papers.
Counterargument: both of these fields seem to have started producing actually-useful things at a much slower rate around the same time the shift toward large collaborations happened. Some people claim that the problems became harder in a way which required more people, but this does not seem more likely than theories in which the causal arrow goes the other way or is thoroughly confounded. There does seem to have been a more general cultural shift involved, and it’s not clear that the large collaborations are actually better for progress as opposed to better for publishing high-profile papers.