Eisen-Suppressed-Inventions-and-other-Discoveries-True-Stories-of ...

Science
as Credo
Roy Lisker
It seems to me that there are too many people in today's intellectual agaragar
who discovered at some early stage that they could feather their nest
egg by the interminable cranking of a handful of dependable algorithms
in obsessive-compulsive fashion in the same way as the Hindu peasant
chews his betel-nuts, the cracker-barrel philosopher his wad of chaw, or
the elderly Jewish housewife in Miami Beach her bag of sunflower
seeds—and thereby concluded that any real effort towards a higher spiritual
or cultural life is a waste of time.
For a great deal of science is nothing more than such forms of compulsive
cud-chewing. Truly original ideas are few; many famous scientists
have built their entire careers on one or two ideas.
In mathematics (the science with which I have the greatest familiarity),
those who developed two original and entirely unconnected trains of thought
are given special mention in the bibliographies and histories of the science:
Bernhard Riemann, for work in both complex variables and differential
geometry; or Gauss for work in number theory, probability and physics.
Really independent ideas are difficult to come by in any field—and by
"idea" I mean something like "evolution" or "the square root of minus
one," or "the atom." Consider Thomas Hardy, capping a successful career
as a novelist with a second career as a poet. Serving us as the exception
which proves the rule, his poetry, though much of it is of a high quality, is
monotone in its affect of dreary gloom. He is fond, for example, of grieving
the miseries of children who aren't even born yet!
Most scientific work, to return to the point, is mechanical, methodical,
repetitive and dull. A person may turn out several hundred papers in his
lifetime of work without the grace of a single idea worthy of the name. It
must be stressed that this in no way negates his competence, dedication or
"credibility." He can indeed be quite a good scientist.
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