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The explanation I hear most often for this is that foundational papers often start de novo. But much of this effect - maybe most of it - is that the ideas from foundational papers enter our culture and colonize it. Turing 1950 may well be much easier to read today than in 1950.https://twitter.com/nabeelqu/status/1181298253381476353 …
There's something funny too about how foundational papers often appear as end points in other investigations. Turing 1936 is, in some sense, an end point to a long and rather esoteric line of investigation about the foundations of mathematics.
Another interesting force is specialization. As funding for science & the number of scientists grows, there is naturally more specialization. The result is a narrowing in _who_ you're writing for (& resulting exclusion). People & papers get more specialized for systemic reasons.
I wonder how much is survivor bias? (Perhaps the papers we tend to go back and re-read are the ones that are easiest to read, hence the ideas therein caught on and grew, to the point that 70 years later people still want to return to the paper?...)
I once read a very interesting article that suggested that part of the reason that Crick and Watson ended up being regarded as the sole discoverers of DNA is that they wrote up their results very accessibly whereas Franklin and a coauthor wrote theirs much less so.
Three reasons in my view: * Low-hanging fruit (early days of any discipline) are more compact. Witness CS (newer discipline) vs math (older) paper density * Creators simplify by virtue of their brilliance * Complexity and abstractions accrete over time = need more specialization
Re #1 (and maybe #2, or #3)... recall that Dijkstra's "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" was actually a letter to the editor, not a formal refereed paper
I have another explanation. Turing was an excellent writer, and most of the people writing in the sciences are horrible at it.
No doubt Turing 1950 is an easy read today is due to the fact that Turing hit right on the nail on so many points. From a 1950 point of view, it was full of novel concepts - things we today take for granted.
In another 50 years it will read as a tweet.
You're being too kind. The primary reasons are simple: the majority of papers by def is 1) of smaller ideas and/or 2) about 1st or 2nd derivatives, that have to be dressed up or filled out to significance. The 1986 RHW backprop paper would have read just as easily then as today.
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