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Re: Science in daily life.
I really liked this quote from The Diversity of Life, by Pulitzer prize-winning biologist E.O. Wilson:
"There comes a time, in all science, when it is profitable to move away from the bold and obvious and circle around a bit, inventing more subtle approaches to search for concealed phenomena."
Too often, the run-of-the-mill scientist goes out looking for a certain thing, to the exclusion of other, more subtle observations that might be made along the way. However, most of the greatest scientists allowed themselves to be guided to their greatest discoveries just by their fascination with exploring and discovering.
There is too little gut-level intuition and freedom of curiosity in the academic world; the pressure to publish, get funding, obtain tenure and add more to a dominant body of research has squashed the freedom and delight with which the naturalists, inventors and discoverers of old went about exploring the world.
Of course there are exceptions in every field--the Kraffts in vulcanology, Eugenie Clark and Jacques Cousteau in marine biology, Agassiz, Hawking, Goodall...but the freedom to explore is severely hampered by the current academic system, more than it has been before, I think.
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Living proof that "Teamplay ensmartens the idiotest of us!"
"Let us be neither hasty nor tardy, and let us always be ready to make a new start. If you fall, rise up. If you fall again, rise up again." St. Peter of Damascus, ~1196 AD
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