Be a scientist in 5 steps
We had a guest talking in our polymer chemistry class today. He's a Joe Sly, postdoc from IBM Amaden doing polymer design and synthesis. Apparently he used to teach history of science somewhere (all that I could catch out of his slur of Australian English) and had summarized neatly a perspective towards the evolution of science and a scientist that's more inspirational than anything I've seen so far. There is
1. the observing scientist (with a picture of what it seems to be a man of Arabic origins with a donkey/camel)
2. the thinking scientist (probably Descartes but I'm not sure)
3. the interacting scientist (Galilleo)
4. the discovering scientist (Einstein)
5. the producing scientist (all the nano and bio big guys out there in this era - this wasn't in any picture but was what I inferred)
The scientist observes, gets triggered to think really hard, interacts with the system and finds out more and more and eventually the truth about it. And then he does something useful with it. It seems to place fundamental and theory research in a somewhat pre-historic position with respect to the experimental and application driven approach. Thinking without doing is not matured scientific behaviour.
As for me, I'm pretty much a newborn with unseeing eyes, problematic at the first step. Not that I'm not observant, but I'm triggered to feel with an artist's sensitivity and not to think. To will myself to think, to think deep and to think right is the task at hand. Perhaps to follow those steps naturally and effortlessly constitutes the entire development of a practical scientist's (as any would have to be to obtain funding unless he is exceptionally brilliant) professional instinct. Late starter or not, with a high probability of stepping out of the door of science after having barely been an insider, I hope to have enough breathe to sustain me through four more years of conscious mind-wrenching and as-inspirational-as-it-could-get toiling.
1. the observing scientist (with a picture of what it seems to be a man of Arabic origins with a donkey/camel)
2. the thinking scientist (probably Descartes but I'm not sure)
3. the interacting scientist (Galilleo)
4. the discovering scientist (Einstein)
5. the producing scientist (all the nano and bio big guys out there in this era - this wasn't in any picture but was what I inferred)
The scientist observes, gets triggered to think really hard, interacts with the system and finds out more and more and eventually the truth about it. And then he does something useful with it. It seems to place fundamental and theory research in a somewhat pre-historic position with respect to the experimental and application driven approach. Thinking without doing is not matured scientific behaviour.
As for me, I'm pretty much a newborn with unseeing eyes, problematic at the first step. Not that I'm not observant, but I'm triggered to feel with an artist's sensitivity and not to think. To will myself to think, to think deep and to think right is the task at hand. Perhaps to follow those steps naturally and effortlessly constitutes the entire development of a practical scientist's (as any would have to be to obtain funding unless he is exceptionally brilliant) professional instinct. Late starter or not, with a high probability of stepping out of the door of science after having barely been an insider, I hope to have enough breathe to sustain me through four more years of conscious mind-wrenching and as-inspirational-as-it-could-get toiling.
posted by Azzurra | 6:25 PM
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