I had a great start to my day, Whilst the house was quiet, I dipped into one of my favourite books, "The Art of Scientific Investigation". Written by William Ian Beardmore Beveridge in 1953. It has never failed to inspire me. It is filled with inspirational quotes and tales, giving an insight to how some of the greatest scientific advances of the day were made.
The one I like most particularly comes from Bessemer, the inventor of the Bessemer Converter, a means of making cheap steel. He said,
"I had an immense advantage over others dealing with the problem inasmuch as I had no fixed
ideas derived from long established practice to control and bias my mind, and did
not suffer from the general belief that whatever is, is right".
In other words, I knew nothing about the manufacture of iron and steel when I started on this problem.
If you give your self time to think about this, it is so true. We are trained by 'experts' who are specialists in their field. They don't just teach us the facts, they teach us how to think. They teach us how to think, and how not to think. They point our minds in what they see as fruitful directions, and away from what they consider to be be less useful directions.
When we are released from the academic world, we follow the paths that have been pointed out to us. Every small advance we make, reinforces in us, the assumption that our mentors were right. Every small advance we make encourages us to keep going in that direction, and leaves us with less time to explore the avenues we were told to avoid. We will never know, is it really a dead end or could it lead to a giant advance?
No comments:
Post a Comment