In the categories you list, I don’t know what I am. I’m trained as an economist and I subscribe to the scientific method when a controlled experiment is possible. We try something of this sort to troubleshoot when there are IT problems.

There are many cases where controlled experiments are not possible and then there are conjectures or beliefs, which are contingent based on what info we have. But then a desire to find experiments to sort those out. If that makes me a modernist, so be it.

I agree that the technology and speed of communication allows a community to solve an already specified problem much faster. And then to get to the next problem suggested by solution of the first. I’m not sure it does much for starting a fundamentally new path.