To provide some context into the thinking habits of scientists, let us think of an analogy. Let us say you are a talented footballer and wish to become one of the best players in the world (a herculean task I must say, but you should never stop dreaming!). How would you go about your job? You’d put in countless hours of hard physical work, along with a general study of tactics and physical routines in order to maximize your effort-to-gain ratio right? The scientific line of thought is also a similar, yet differently oriented method at maximizing the effort-to-gain ratio for scientists!
The most important job of a scientist is to think of ideas, is to think of new ways to look at certain phenomena in order to come up with solutions to existing problems. These problems are quite like that day-to-day problems faced by the layman, but they differ in the sheer magnitude of the problem. While examples of trivial day-to-day problems may include dealing with the stresses of a particular hard taskmaster, scientific problems such as figuring out the nature of a quantum theory of gravity require immense ingenuity and limitless creativity to solve. Just as the layman thinks of ways to solve his problem, thinking about his problem at certain times of the day, the scientist must think upon the nature of his problem for days, weeks, months, or even years! Failing to do so, the scientist will fail to accomplish one of his most important motives: understanding the nature of physical law.
It is the time to inspect the budding Best Footballer of the Year yet again. Apart from other sportsmen who have very ambitious goals just like our brilliant little footballer, nobody has the strength and the willpower to put in the amount of work that the footballer puts in. If a scientist is told to do what the footballer does for even a week, he will must certainly object, quite vehemently in fact! This is because the scientist is just not cut out to do the physically grinding work that a footballer considers his bread and butter. Ditto with the footballer. Tell him to make meaning of the plethora of complex formulae that he sees on the scientist’s board for a week, and he would probably say something along the lines, “Ill sooner die than subjugate myself to this crap!”
The idea that I am trying to stress is that the scientist is no different from any other career-driven individual. The reason why science appears to be complex is because it is a scientist’s job to make sure his ideas stands up to the most diverse of scrutinies! Therefore, a person who doesn’t “think” about scientific principles as if his life depended on it does not understand fully the implications of the lines of reasoning, and in extreme cases, the thought process itself. In a similar way, that person cannot master playing football either. The person can only grasp the momentous work that goes behind achievement in other fields.
Here a clarification is necessary. I have talked about day-to-day problems and scientific problems as if they are very similar. In almost all cases, this is not true. Scientists don’t “worry” per se about their problems, rather they focus all their energy in solving those problems. Therefore, many a times, scientists are successful in solving problems. Because the solutions to these problems required some innovation on the part of the scientist, it might not be very understandable to the common person. So while there are certain similarities between problems faced by people and the problems scientists tackle, there are much bigger differences.
Therefore, while certain scientific ideas are considerably hard to understand, so is learning a dazzling football skill. While developing the thinking process necessary to become a scientist is difficult, developing the physique to become a good footballer is equally challenging. Scientists are no different from other human beings; rather, they focus all their energy on solving problems. Thinking of science as meant to be for only a handful of scientists shuts the door to the wealth of possibilities that are offered to scientists.
In conclusion, scientific thought requires persistence in questioning and thinking, and while these are excellent traits that are developed as a result of pursuing the sciences, other careers demand other traits in an equally proficient level. Therefore, to characterize scientists as super-humans (this could be used to describe certain scientists though!), is simply misguided; if scientists are super-humans, so are other professionals that are distinguished in their own careers!
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