Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist

by John Brockman (Editor)

What makes a child decide to become a scientist?

•For Robert Sapolsky–Stanford professor of biology–it was an argument with a rabbi over a passage in the Bible.
•Physicist Lee Smolin traces his inspiration to a volume of Einstein’s work, picked up as a diversion from heartbreak.
•Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist and the author of Flow , found his calling through Descartes.

Murray Gell-Mann, Nicholas Humphrey, Freeman Dyson . . . 27 scientists in all write about what it was that sent them on the path to their life's work. Illuminating memoir meets superb science writing in stories that invite us to consider what it is–and what it isn’t–that sets the scientific mind apart.

Genres: Science, Education, Nonfiction, Parenting, Psychology, Biography Memoir, Biography

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

John Brockman is an American literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. He established the Edge Foundation, an organization that brings together leading edge thinkers across a broad range of scientific and technical fields.

He is author and editor of several books, including: The Third Culture (1995); The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2000 Years (2000); The Next Fifty Years (2002) and The New Humanists (2003).

He has the distinction of being the only person to have been profiled on Page One of the "Science Times" (1997) and the "Arts & Leisure" (1966), both supplements of The New York Times.

Reviews

[Camelia Rose (on hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist at our local library book sale, because I like to read about science, scientists and parenting. This is a collection of short autographical essays from an assortment of accomplished scientists (mostly psychologists and physicists), a few famous (Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins), others less so but all authors of books.

What strikes me first is that many scientists in the book made a great effort to exam objectively their childhood and the journey to become a scientist. Some even educate readers to take memoirs with a grain of salt, because, as science has proved, memories are malleable. No melodrama as you might expect in memoirs of some other professions.

After reading the whole collection, it is still hard to tell how a child becomes a scientist. Perhaps having a curious mind is the prerequisite of becoming a scientist, but how curious is curious? And how many curious people who actually become a scientist? Is it because of the genes? Parenting influence? Yet both parental nudging and parental freedom could have the same outcome. Or fate? Can random events change the entire course of one's life? Some think they do. J. Doyne Farmer said: "A good deal of our lives is determined by chance, and in my life there is one of the best examples."

Ok, now we are back to this Nature vs Nurture debate.

The style various from one piece to another, so as the writing quality. Some dry, some emotionally moving, some joyful, some serious. My two favorites: A Childhood Between Realities by Jaron Lanier; The Everyday Practice of Physics in Silver City, New Mexico by J. Doyne Farmer. Steven Pinker's How We May Have Become What We are is disappointing, too dry and too preachy.

The collection includes several women. It is not hard to notice that women scientists face more obstacles than men in their scientific career. Alison Gopnik wrote: "And I think young women shouldn't feel that they are defying the odds if they try to combine motherhood and a scientific career. I was lucky, but children--and science--should't have to rely on luck."

[Shannon Hedges · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this anthology, which consisted largely of psychologists and physicists. I picked this up because I knew Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins contributed essays. So how does a child become a scientist? Sleepovers with Stephen Hawking and living next to Einstein are certainly helpful. Dating Carl Sagan is also advantageous. Moreover, many of the scientists in this collection are children of scientists. I did see a pattern of parental involvement in encouraging creative and critical thinking. Children are naturally inquisitive, and adults should foster their curiosity. This was a very interesting read that I highly recommend. Female scientists were well represented. Excellent book.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alright book, although I became a jealous rage monster reading essays that ran something like 'Newton was my father, Einstein would come over for cocktails, we would go on holiday with Darwin and Huxley, I built my first telescope with Galileo and my first computer with Turing. Hawking would boss us kids about.' There were a frightening number of essays like this (granted, there were others whose parents told them not to read so much, it was bad for their eyes, but these did not make me envious.) And the stories about going to University and having long intellectual discussions. When I tried this back in the day I was met with eyerolling and shushing, but this is probably because I'm an obnoxious git incapable of civilized conversation, which in my case would be pseudo-intellectual, anyway.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the concept of this book, but I wish the author would have branched out more into the other types of scientists than physicists. I'm also finding that if you want to be famous in science, you need to come from a lot of money, have parents that are incredibly hands-off, and you need to grow up in England.

[Abby Albright · Rating 2 out of 5]

“What is the single most important quality that suits you for a career in science? People often say curiosity, but surely that can't be the whole story. After all, everyone is curious to some degree, but not everyone is destined to be a scientist. I would argue that you need to be obsessively, passionately, almost pathologically curious. Or, as Peter Medawar once said, you need to "experience physical discomfort when there is incomprehension." Curiosity needs to dominate your life.”

A few good bits, such as the quote above. I enjoyed many of the female-written essays, as well as Ramachandran’s.

But mostly sounded like a bunch of science Nepo babies crying about how they “never had to struggle” in the science world because they used to get drinks with Einstein, go on vacations with Darwin, or be childhood friends with Hawking. Not relatable, and not successful in gaining my sympathy.

Not sure how much I learned about how children become scientists.

[Roozbeh Daneshvar · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did this, I did that. I was this, I was that. I used to play with this and that, I read this and that: this is the major theme throughout the book. Most of the contributors, all extremely well achieved, did not go beyond a review of their childhood, while not bringing the minimal insights into the picture. What severely lacked from most of the pieces was lack of a story and a well-written narration. I found this book mostly a retelling of events without any story or narration behind it.

Many of the times, the writings became saturated with boasting and many of the times even worse: humble bragging. I found the impact of the environment also quite shallow: most of them did not go deep and something in the line of "my parents cared a lot", "I had good education", "I had good teachers" etc. (without even going into a deeper layer and opening more on what made those privileges possible). Let's look at a piece of the book and you judge if this piece can be insightful or inspiring or anyhow useful:

My mother’s mother was one of the first women in Europe to get her PhD in chemistry. She lectured in Europe and ran a school for young women (the Stern Schüler) that her mother had started in the nineteenth century. My mother’s father was a physician and a colleague of Sigmund Freud (whose grandson Walter once proposed to my mother). My mother’s sister is a psychologist who has recently written books on the Jews uprooted by the Holocaust. My father’s father was an engineer, and my father’s brother was a gifted inventor, producing elaborate machines to automate European factories. George Parker, a cousin of my mother’s, was a talented electrical engineer for Bell Labs; his brother Frank was a brilliant intellectual and New York attorney. So it was not easy for a small child to get a word in edgewise at my family get-togethers. The intense and animated discussions were invariably about new ideas, usually those of intellectuals I had never heard of.

Sometimes the contributors went into too many technical details. They were carried away by their technical side and went on and on, while I think that their scope of writing for this book was not this many details.

Yet, there is a deeper issue with this book: our recalling of events and our perception of what has shaped us and made us who we are, can be quite problematic. Trying to reduce a multitude of factors into a few items is prone to making the mistake of over-simplification. I think Steven Pinker put it succinctly:

Don’t believe a word of what you read in this essay on the childhood influences that led me to become a scientist. Don’t believe a word of what you read in the other essays, either.

he also mentioned:

The conventional wisdom might have it backward. Rather than childhood experiences causing us to be who we are, who we are causes our childhood experiences.

and:

When asked to submit an essay about our lives, we become content providers who edit the events into the satisfying arc of a good plot.

and:

Chekhov remarked that if an audience is shown a gun in act 1, they can count on it going off in act 3. In composing a story line for our lives, knowing that a gun has gone off in act 3 tempts us to show it to the audience in act 1.

and:

There is one more reason that autobiographies are less than truthful: We all want to look good. Experiments have shown that most people explain their behavior in ways that put them in the best light. We all sell ourselves as capable, noble, consistent, and in control of our lives, so that we can entice people to befriend us, trust us, or empower us. This explains the well-known phenomenon of cognitive dissonance reduction, in which people say they enjoyed a boring task for which they were paid a trifling sum because they don’t want to admit that they can be manipulated by social pressure.

Judith Rich Harris had a similar viewpoint:

The malleability of memory is the first reason why autobiographies should be taken with a grain of salt.

and:

As the historian, whose name is Drew Gilpin Faust, observed, “We create ourselves out of the stories we tell about our lives, stories that impose purpose and meaning on experiences that often seem random and discontinuous.”

the psychologist Elizabeth Loftus put it, “Memory is a creative event, born anew every day. You fill in the holes every time you reconstruct an event in your own mind.” You fill them in on the basis of your current perspective, which may differ from the perspective you had when the event occurred.

I liked some quotes from the book:

And I think young women shouldn’t feel that they are defying the odds if they try to combine motherhood and a scientific career. I was lucky, but children—and science—shouldn’t have to rely on luck.

The first of these invisible causes is our genome. As the psychologist Hans Eysenck once said, the largest influence parents have on their children is at the moment of conception.

I chose my parents wisely.

(As an aside, I have no sympathy for the recent campaign to demote Pluto to a prominent Kuiper Belt object instead of a planet. Its weird orbit out there, usually but not always beyond the normal planets, is an inspiration to every kid who doesn’t fit in. Let Pluto remain a planet, now and forever!)

What Dr. Dolittle produced in me was an awareness of what we would now call “speciesism”: the automatic assumption that humans deserve special treatment over and above all other animals simply because we are human. Doctrinaire antiabortionists who blow up clinics and murder good doctors turn out on examination to be rank speciesists. An unborn baby is by any reasonable standards less deserving of moral sympathy than an adult cow. The prolifer screams “Murder!” at the abortion doctor and goes home to a steak dinner. No child brought up on Dr. Dolittle could miss the double standard. A child brought up on the Bible most certainly could.

The habit of questioning authority is one of the most valuable gifts that a book, or a teacher, can give a young would-be scientist. Don’t just accept what everybody tells you—think for yourself.

What is the single most important quality that suits you for a career in science? People often say “curiosity,” but surely that can’t be the whole story. After all, everyone is curious to some degree, but not everyone is destined to be a scientist. I would argue that you need to be obsessively, passionately, almost pathologically curious. Or, as Peter Medawar once said, you need to “experience physical discomfort when there is incomprehension.” Curiosity needs to dominate your life.

According to my theory, humans are innately motivated, as a result of their evolutionary history, to ally themselves with a group of others like themselves—for children, that means the peer group—and to tailor their behavior to that of their group. This process, called socialization, makes children more similar in behavior to their peers. But there is another process, operating at the same time, that makes children less like their peers: differentiation within the group. The members of a group differ in status, or are typecast by the others in different ways, which widens the personality differences among them.

I have read collections by John Brockman before, and I have truly enjoyed them. Yet, this one specifically, I believe was a failure and not on par with his other collections. Except the articles of a few of the writers, I do not recommend this book.

PS. It took me more than 10 years to finish this book.

[Yucel Kalem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bu kitabı TÜBİTAK'ın bilim kitapları yayınladığı dönemde okumuştum. Herkese önerdiğim ama ne yazık ki yeni baskısı olmayan bir kitaptır.
Tekrar okumak istediğim ama kütüphanemi alt-üst etmeme rağmen bulamadığım, büyük olasılık birisine "okusun diye verdiğim geri dönmeyen" kitaplarımdan birisidir. Umarım okumuştur.
Her ebeveyn okumalı türünden bir kitaptır.
Aklımda kalan en önemli şey alanında ünlü olan -bazıları Nobelli- bu yazarların çocukken New York Times okunan evlerden, kültür ve sanat içinde büyütülen ailelerden geldiğiydi.
Hadi Amerika'yı yeniden keşfetmek için nafile çaba harcamayın. Entelektüel derinliği olmayan ortamlarda büyümek ve entelektüel derinliği olan birey olmak için çaba göstermek bizi yaratıcı bireyler haline getirir.
Bulursanız okuyun.
Not: Pegasus Yayıncılık yeni basımını yapmış. Tıpkı diğer Tübitak mağduru Jared Diamond'ın Silahlar Mikroplar ve Çelik kitabı gibi. Teşekkürler Pegasus Yayıncılık.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this volume, I'm still not certain how exactly a child becomes a scientist. But I'm certain reading the book was worth the effort. It was a pleasure to read. There is one common theme in each short essay that is worth mentioning: these scientists were not only incredibly curious and had encouraging parents, they were all voracious readers. Books were a significant part of all the contributors. They read books about biology, mathematics, physics, cosmology, archeology, neurology, and other important fields. And they also read fiction, poetry, philosophy, and dramatic works. Again, I'm not certain this is THE formula that creates a scientist. To me, it just sounds like a wonderful way to spend one's time.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection isn't really about how a child becomes a scientist exactly, it's a collection of short autobiographical stories about how some of the scientists in it discovered or grew up with a appreciation for science.

Some of them are great, off the top of my head, Daniel Dennett's story about his very unusual childhood abroad and his early humanities background before he went into science was very humourously told.

The rest in this collection are a little spotty, so read the best ones and skip the rest.

[Geetanjali · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of original essays by celebrated third culture thinkers - scientists who, through their work and writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are. The authors, all of whom are world-class scientists, are also well-known as authors of books for the general public. A very engaging book to read.The respective scientists justify,testify the reasons they chose to follow the path of science.

[Miriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with any group of essays, some were stronger than others. I enjoyed hearing from a diverse group of scientists. Even though they followed different paths into science, there are some similarities between their stories that were very interesting.

[EAL · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first third of the essays didn't do anything for me, especially the very first since it seemed a litany of connections. Much more interesting were the ones by Freeman Dyson, Richard Dawkins, Janna Levin, &c. I wish to steep myself in more science writing, particularly Darwin.

[Lydia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book of personal anecdotes you will have a tendency to take as fact because there are oh so many Ph.D's slathering these insides. At least go read the Lee Smolin chapter.

[Marsmannix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parents: if you want to raise something other than a one-celled consumer of mass culture, READ THIS BOOK. your kid may have a chance.

[Becky Shattuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

The idea behind the book is an interesting one: ask a bunch of scientists to write about what kind of experiences they had as children that helped propel them into their field. The final product, though, generally fails to impress.

I was very disappointed in the first third of this book. Almost all of these first essays were from men, and a lot of them really only talked about working with actual scientists as children. One man helped his grandfather in the lab. Another came from a lineage of scientists and doctors. Some heard their parents talk about their research at the dinner table. As I'm reading these, I'm thinking, "How is this going to help anyone?"

Oddly, a number of the first essays were also about sex, and especially the male scientists' attraction to women. One remarked that he first became interested in science because he liked Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island, and the smart guy got her. Another talked about women turning tricks behind the convenience store he worked at, and how he became interested in thinking about how men strive for power in order to have sex and procreate. Another enjoyed confounding pretty girls in social science classes with jargon from the hard sciences, feeling like he was impressing and attracting her. There are other examples, but I was left thinking, "Clearly, they are writing about the male experience. This isn't going to help attract women into the field." Combined with all of the essays from scientists about how their parents were scientists and their grandparents, I couldn't help but think this entire book would only serve to show how the fields of science stagnate with the same type of person.

I almost quit reading, but I'm glad I stuck with it. The essays that appear later in the book are much better. These scientists discuss about how they enjoy experiences in the field, doing observational work instead of repetitive experiments. A lot talked about tinkering with computers, circuits, or LEGOs, or talked about persevering and writing to a number of schools and scientists they were were interested in. A number write about the enjoyment of looking for patterns, not only in nature, but also in the human experience (like language). One scientist shared his experience with his growing passion for physics and mathematics and the challenges he faced with his family pushing him to pursue premed courses in school instead. In short, the essays that appear later in the book are much better and are more likely to have a positive influence on the reader (unless the reader is male and born into a family of scientists. Then, I suppose, the earlier essays might be relevant).

I'm not sure how the editor chose to organize these essays, but I think this book would be improved if some of the essays that appear in the second half of the book are moved to the beginning.

There were essays that were interesting just because of the content they covered. I got a kick out of the essay written by a psychologist from Harvard, Steven Pinker, as he talked about how we tailor or memories so that they fit our personal narrative. When our narrative changes, we change our memories to fit. He ultimately dismissed all of the other scientists' essays because, he argued, they are only attributing any significance to these early experiences because they are looking for it.

[Ree]

This book feels good. Like endearingly self-indulgent reflections and profound advice from really smart old people. Some highlights:
- Grown-ups really have no clue what is going on (coincidentally also my main takeaway from 2020).
- Nothing is too difficult or grown up for children to read.
- Teachers tend to be hard on us to test us. Accept all trusting good intention, and don't pick fights.
- Good teachers show us the problems we can solve. Not impossible, but just difficult enough.
- An exam question a great teacher would ask: you are having a dinner party. You must invite some of the leading figures in the field of sociobiology. Who will they be and what will they discuss?
- Good descriptions take us quite a bit of the way into explanations.
- Richard Dawkins on "philosophic juvenilia" - "...[my] entire career since has been a sort of extended Oxford tutorial, and my books extended essays."
- Don't choose your career, first decide what you want to do and then see which careers are most likely to allow you maximum opportunities and flexibility in the decades ahead.
- Jaron Lanier, on technology that allows us to become more egalitarian: "in the process we deemphasize our subjective experience of the world, which is what validates us as individuals and gives our lives flavor and meaning."
- Only two questions matter when you look back over your life: How much impact have I had? And how much fun?

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readability 7. Rating 5. Sort of a "just so" collection of "how a child becomes a scientist" from the point of view of scientists looking back on their own lives. Interesting and quite varied, but devoid of analysis or synthesis. At least two of the scientists note that the exercise is meaningless - since people remember what they remember, not necessary what was, and explanations tend to reflect current culture rather than any objective reality. My only useful takeaway was that, despite the fact that this is a subset of scientists who are also popular writers, they had a wide variety of backgrounds and early life experiences, and came to science at very divergent points in their lives, from seemingly coming out of the womb with test tubes in hand to figuring it out in college or even later.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall I found this collection to be very frustrating. As others have noted, the "answer" to "how a child becomes a scientist" from this book seems to be "have parents who are scientists." Additionally, out of the 27 essays, only 6 seem to be written by women, and underrepresented minorities are definitely underrepresented here. Many of the essays included objectification of women (often citing the idea of "getting girls" to be a motivator to become a famous scientist), although I will note that Lynn Margulis also called herself "boy crazy," so maybe some of this is just scientists recounting their growth, including puberty.

Having said that, a few of the essays were really well written and thought provoking, and the contributors are big names. I'd recommend picking out a few of interest if you happen upon this book; my favorite was probably VS Ramachandran.

[Natasha]

Two quotes I really like:
"I'm still that kid sitting alone in the middle of the night, thrilled just to look through the window at my piece of the universe, wondering what else is out there." -Janna Levin
"Science has a great deal more in common with poetry than most of us realize; both enterprises involve unusual juxtapositions of ideas and a certain romantic vision of the world." -V. S. Ramachandran

[Avinash Pandey · Rating 4 out of 5]

# Curiosity alone isn't good enough. You have to be obsessed.

This book consists series of autobiographical account of renowned scientists who tell the tale of their curious childhood, which jettisoned their career to become iconoclasts in their chosen domains.
E.g Richard Dawkins, Howard Garner, Steven Pinker, Ray Kruzwel, Milay C etc.

[Iwona Bieda Budziaszek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bardzo ciekawa.czyta się przyjemnie

[Stacie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun essays from scientists about what they wanted to be when they grew up, and how science made an appearance in their lives.

[Shinae Noh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of beautiful essays written by 27 prominent scientists about their childhood and how they were led to do what they did.

[Carlosfelipe Pardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not entirely interesting, but some great stories. Most are answering the question of how they grew up, some (especially Pinker) refuse to answer and just describe their work which was annoying.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it interesting that many of these scientists didn't have a burning desire to be scientists in their school years and entered university with no clear idea that they would become scientists. Some were inspired by great lecturers which led them into their chosen specialisation while others didn't have great experiences in subjects that they intended on progressing in or with lecturers which diverted them from one area of science to another. Personality and style of teachers, peers and chance meetings of mentors led many of these people down unexpected but very interesting paths.

[Soner Işıksal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Dawkins'in ve Carl Sagan'ın ilk eşi, biyolog Lynn Margulis'in de aralarında bulunduğu yirmi yedi önemli bilim insanının çocukluklarını, nasıl bu yola girdiklerini anlattıkları güzel bir derleme.

Çocukken okuyup etkilendikleri kitaplar, izledikleri filmler, çıktıkları geziler, tanıştıkları ve hayatlarına yön veren insanlar...

Kimi kamyon durağında çalışmış, kimi babasına bıraksa esaslı bir kovboy olacakken bilim insanı olmuş, kimi ise zaten bilim dünyasının tam ortasına doğmuş.

Keyifliydi.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each distinguished scientist wrote a short essay answering the question, "How did you become a scientist?" The respondents ran the gambit with insight and humor. I laughed out loud several times! Definitely a worthwhile read. I also found it instructive to think about why I felt endeared to some scientists while others seemed so pompous. I'd love to hear what you think!

[Irtaza Hussain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and has a good list of things you might want to look up. I also got a lot of affirmation in the direction I'm already going in and that was something I really needed but it's good to know that this sort of curiosity and the feelings behind it can be used as motivation.

[Mustafa Acungil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bilim insanlarından, çoğu bilime nasıl yönlendiklerini de içerecek şekilde çocukluklarına ve gelişim dönemlerine ilişkin anlatılar.
Bu tür konularla ilgilenenler için gayet keyifli bir kitaptı.
Yakaladığım birkaç detay benim için yararlı oldu.

[Alexis]

Not a must, methinkes.