“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
- Albert Einstein
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Doing Science.. (Contd..)
Just read an extraordinary piece by Dug Green (Editorial Board Member Cell) and could not help but share some really great comments he made in the article (link attached at the end of this).
Most of the time our experiments do not work. "There is an important reason for this failure of perfectly logical ideas to translate into results, .... Life is not logical, because living things are not designed. Any biological system is a cobbled-together, makeshift affair that once upon a time happened to work better than some other contraption, so that it was reproduced and subsequently built upon. All biology in this view of life is an historical accident. And it is for this reason (among others, as we will see) that our experiments so often fail. Life does not yield to logic. I couldn't agree more.
Where do the great ideas come form? "You are going to hate the answer: Read. A lot. Read everything you find interesting, inside and outside your field, and then read everything else. By read I do not mean look at the abstract (although that is a start) or download the PDF (ditto). ...Creativity, as near as we can tell (I've read about this), emerges from a combinatorial process in which bits of information are rearranged and extrapolated at a subconscious level think of it as a conceptual smoothie sloshing around in your brain. Then, when you happen to think about something you have noticed in the lab, wondered about in the literature, or worried about late at night (you do this, right?), there emerges an aha that might explain something that has never been explained before. (How do you know it hasn't been explained before? Because you did the reading!) This only works if there is a lot of information oozing around in the blended brain smoothie. And by the way, reading is pretty relaxing, so think of it as stress relief (if reading stresses you out, it might be a good time to reconsider your career choice)."
Fitness of people to continue science as career. "Many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and even some faculty got into this business without fully realizing how hard it is, and at some point, you may decide that continuing in this mad pursuit just isn't for you. You need to know that this is fine. Hopefully, you began this path because you like science, and if you dislike being a scientist, it need not follow that you no longer like science. There are a great many ways to use the skills you have acquired, both practical and intellectual, in pursuing other careers. I encourage you to explore those other options at the earliest opportunity. But if you are going to be a scientist anyway, then decide to do it. In the words of a small, green philosopher, Do or do not. There is no try." I discussed this before here.
Excerpts from an article by Douglas R. Green, in Molecular Cell, Volume 40, Issue 2, 176-178, 22 October 2010.
Most of the time our experiments do not work. "There is an important reason for this failure of perfectly logical ideas to translate into results, .... Life is not logical, because living things are not designed. Any biological system is a cobbled-together, makeshift affair that once upon a time happened to work better than some other contraption, so that it was reproduced and subsequently built upon. All biology in this view of life is an historical accident. And it is for this reason (among others, as we will see) that our experiments so often fail. Life does not yield to logic. I couldn't agree more.
Where do the great ideas come form? "You are going to hate the answer: Read. A lot. Read everything you find interesting, inside and outside your field, and then read everything else. By read I do not mean look at the abstract (although that is a start) or download the PDF (ditto). ...Creativity, as near as we can tell (I've read about this), emerges from a combinatorial process in which bits of information are rearranged and extrapolated at a subconscious level think of it as a conceptual smoothie sloshing around in your brain. Then, when you happen to think about something you have noticed in the lab, wondered about in the literature, or worried about late at night (you do this, right?), there emerges an aha that might explain something that has never been explained before. (How do you know it hasn't been explained before? Because you did the reading!) This only works if there is a lot of information oozing around in the blended brain smoothie. And by the way, reading is pretty relaxing, so think of it as stress relief (if reading stresses you out, it might be a good time to reconsider your career choice)."
Fitness of people to continue science as career. "Many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and even some faculty got into this business without fully realizing how hard it is, and at some point, you may decide that continuing in this mad pursuit just isn't for you. You need to know that this is fine. Hopefully, you began this path because you like science, and if you dislike being a scientist, it need not follow that you no longer like science. There are a great many ways to use the skills you have acquired, both practical and intellectual, in pursuing other careers. I encourage you to explore those other options at the earliest opportunity. But if you are going to be a scientist anyway, then decide to do it. In the words of a small, green philosopher, Do or do not. There is no try." I discussed this before here.
Excerpts from an article by Douglas R. Green, in Molecular Cell, Volume 40, Issue 2, 176-178, 22 October 2010.
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