Letters to a Young Scientist by Edward O. Wilson. Wish I started reading Wilson when I was in my teens but its never too late. For all those teens out there; grab this book and devour it - Wilson offers a recipe to change your life on a platter !!
Btw., it was Wilson who coined the term "Evolutionary Biology".
On Math:
Exceptional mathematical fluency is required in only a few disciplines. Particle physics, astrophysics, and information theory come to mind. Far more important throughout the rest of science and its applications, however, is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes in visual images by intuition. It’s something everyone already does to some degree.
Wilson's Principle Number One:
It is far easier for scientists to acquire needed collaboration from mathematicians and statisticians than it is for mathematicians and statisticians to find scientists able to make use of their equations.
Wilson's Principle Number Two:
For every scientist, whether researcher, technologist, or teacher, of whatever competence in mathematics, there exists a discipline in science for which that level of mathematical competence is enough to achieve excellence.
Wilson's Principle Number Three:
You may have heard the military rule for the summoning of troops to a battlefield: “March to the sound of the guns.” In science the opposite is the one for you, as expressed in Principle Number Three: March away from the sound of the guns. Observe the fray from a distance, and while you are at it, consider making your own fray.
Wilson'sPrinciple Number Four:
In the search for scientific discoveries, every problem is an opportunity. The more difficult the problem, the greater the likely importance of its solution.
Wilson's Principle Number Five:
For every problem in a given discipline of science, there exists a species or other entity or phenomenon ideal for its solution. (Example: a kind of mollusk, the sea hare Aplysia, proved ideal for exploring the cellular base of memory.) Conversely, for every species or other entity or phenomenon, there exist important problems for the solution of which it is ideally suited. (Example: bats were logical for the discovery of sonar.)
On Choosing a Domain:
The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper. Keep in mind that innovators in both literature and science are basically dreamers and storytellers. In the early stages of the creation of both literature and science, everything in the mind is a story. There is an imagined ending, and usually an imagined beginning, and a selection of bits and pieces that might fit in between. In works of literature and science alike, any part can be changed, causing a ripple among the other parts, some of which are discarded and new ones added. The surviving fragments are variously joined and separated, and moved about as the story forms. One scenario emerges, then another. The scenarios, whether literary or scientific in nature, compete with one another. Some overlap. Words and sentences (or equations or experiments) are tried to make sense of the whole thing. Early on, an end to all the imagining is conceived. It arrives at a wondrous denouement (or scientific breakthrough). But is it the best, is it true? To bring the end safely home is the goal of the creative mind. Whatever that might be, wherever located, however expressed, it begins as a phantom that rises, gains detail, then at the last moment either fades to be replaced, or, like the mythical giant Antaeus touching Mother Earth, gains strength. Inexpressible thoughts throughout flit along the edges. As the best fragments solidify, they are put in place and moved about, and the story grows until it reaches an inspired end.
Btw., it was Wilson who coined the term "Evolutionary Biology".
On Math:
Exceptional mathematical fluency is required in only a few disciplines. Particle physics, astrophysics, and information theory come to mind. Far more important throughout the rest of science and its applications, however, is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes in visual images by intuition. It’s something everyone already does to some degree.
Wilson's Principle Number One:
It is far easier for scientists to acquire needed collaboration from mathematicians and statisticians than it is for mathematicians and statisticians to find scientists able to make use of their equations.
Wilson's Principle Number Two:
For every scientist, whether researcher, technologist, or teacher, of whatever competence in mathematics, there exists a discipline in science for which that level of mathematical competence is enough to achieve excellence.
Wilson's Principle Number Three:
You may have heard the military rule for the summoning of troops to a battlefield: “March to the sound of the guns.” In science the opposite is the one for you, as expressed in Principle Number Three: March away from the sound of the guns. Observe the fray from a distance, and while you are at it, consider making your own fray.
Wilson'sPrinciple Number Four:
In the search for scientific discoveries, every problem is an opportunity. The more difficult the problem, the greater the likely importance of its solution.
Wilson's Principle Number Five:
For every problem in a given discipline of science, there exists a species or other entity or phenomenon ideal for its solution. (Example: a kind of mollusk, the sea hare Aplysia, proved ideal for exploring the cellular base of memory.) Conversely, for every species or other entity or phenomenon, there exist important problems for the solution of which it is ideally suited. (Example: bats were logical for the discovery of sonar.)
On Choosing a Domain:
- I believe that other experienced scientists would agree with me that when you are selecting a domain of knowledge in which to conduct original research, it is wise to look for one that is sparsely inhabited.
- Consider a rotting tree stump in a forest. You and I casually walking past it on a trail would not give it more than a passing glance. But wait a moment. Walk around the stump slowly, look at it closely— as a fellow scientist. Before you, in miniature, is the equivalent of an unexplored planet. What you can learn from the decaying mass depends on your training and the science you have chosen to begin your career. Choose a subject, draw on it from anywhere in physics, chemistry, or biology. With imagination you will conceive original research programs that can be centered on the rotting stump.
- All of the life of the stump ecosystem is dwarfed, however, in both variety and numbers of organisms, by the bacteria. In a gram of detritus on the surface or soil beneath the stump’s base exist a billion bacteria. Together this multitude represents an estimated five thousand to six thousand species, virtually all unknown to science. Still smaller and likely even more diverse and abundant (we don’t know for sure) are the viruses. To give you a sense of relative size at this lowest end of the stump-world scale, think of one cell of a multicellular organism as the size of a small city. A bacterium would then be the size of a football field and a virus the size of a football.
- Imagine the extent of human ignorance! Beneath the surface of the oceans and seas, which cover 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, there exists an all but countless number of lost worlds. Their complete exploration will occupy generations of explorers from every discipline of science.
The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper. Keep in mind that innovators in both literature and science are basically dreamers and storytellers. In the early stages of the creation of both literature and science, everything in the mind is a story. There is an imagined ending, and usually an imagined beginning, and a selection of bits and pieces that might fit in between. In works of literature and science alike, any part can be changed, causing a ripple among the other parts, some of which are discarded and new ones added. The surviving fragments are variously joined and separated, and moved about as the story forms. One scenario emerges, then another. The scenarios, whether literary or scientific in nature, compete with one another. Some overlap. Words and sentences (or equations or experiments) are tried to make sense of the whole thing. Early on, an end to all the imagining is conceived. It arrives at a wondrous denouement (or scientific breakthrough). But is it the best, is it true? To bring the end safely home is the goal of the creative mind. Whatever that might be, wherever located, however expressed, it begins as a phantom that rises, gains detail, then at the last moment either fades to be replaced, or, like the mythical giant Antaeus touching Mother Earth, gains strength. Inexpressible thoughts throughout flit along the edges. As the best fragments solidify, they are put in place and moved about, and the story grows until it reaches an inspired end.
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