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Linnaeus had no idea, not even to the power of 10 (that is, whether 10,000, or 100,000, or 1,000,000), of the magnitude of his self-assigned task. He guessed that plant species, his specialty, would turn out to number around 10,000. The richness of the tropical regions were unknown to him. The number of known and classified plant species today is 310,000 and is expected to reach 350,000. When animals and fungi are added, the total number of species currently known is in excess of 1.9 million—and is expected to eventually reach 10 million or more. Of bacteria, the “dark matter” of living
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At the time I write, over half the known species on Earth have been incorporated. The knowledge is available to anyone, anytime, anywhere, for free, at a keystroke (EOL.com).
Eol.org
If nonvenomous, I would simply grab it. If venomous, I would first press it down just behind the head with a stick, roll the stick forward until its head was immobile, then grasp it by the neck and lift it up.
My confessional instead is intended to illustrate an important principle I’ve seen unfold in the careers of many successful scientists. It is quite simple: put passion ahead of training. Feel out in any way you can what you most want to do in science, or technology, or some other science-related profession. Obey that passion as long as it lasts. Feed it with the knowledge the mind needs to grow. Sample other subjects, acquire a general education in science, and be smart enough to switch to a greater love if one appears. But don’t just drift through courses in science hoping that love will come
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a subject that is both a vital asset for and a potential barrier to your career: mathematics, the great bugbear for many would-be scientists.
let us say you’ve picked up calculus and analytic geometry—if you like to solve puzzles, and if you think logarithms are a neat way to express variables across orders of magnitude,
If, on the other hand, you are a bit short in mathematical training, even very short, relax. You are far from alone in the community of scientists, and here is a professional secret to encourage you: many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate.
Mathematicians like to take the measurement of exponential growth from just counting jumps from one generation to the next, to the much more general state to fit a large population over a particular moment in time (to the hour, minute, or shorter interval as they choose).
This is done with calculus, which expresses the growth of population in the form dN/dt = rN, which says in any very short interval of time, dt, the population is growing a certain amount, dN, and the rate is the differential dN/dt.
famous one learned from exponential growth of the kind I’ve just described is the following. Suppose there is a pond, and a lily pad is put in the pond. This first pad doubles into two pads, each of which also doubles. The pond will fill and no more pads can double at the end of thirty days. When is the pond half full? On the twenty-ninth day. This elementary bit of mathematics, obvious upon commonsense reflection, is one of many ways to emphasize the risks of excessive population growth.
My student days being at the end of the Depression, algebra just wasn’t offered. I finally got around to calculus as a thirty-two-year-old tenured professor at Harvard, where I sat uncomfortably in classes with undergraduate students only a bit more than half my age.
A couple of them were students in a course on evolutionary biology I was teaching. I swallowed my pride and learned calculus.
There is nothing that you and I can do about hereditary differences, but it is possible to greatly reduce the part of the variation due to the environment simply by raising our ability through education and practice.
But short of these adventures of advanced pure mathematics, the language of mathematicians can be learned well enough to understand the majority of mathematical statements made in scientific publications.
broadly and deeply about the natural world. He found, for example, a lot of fossils, some of extinct large animals similar to modern species like horses, tigers, and rhinoceroses—yet different in many important ways than these modern equivalents. Were they just victims of the biblical flood that Noah failed to save? But that couldn’t be, Darwin must have realized; Noah saved all the kinds of animals. The South American species were obviously not among them.
One day, during this lucubration, when a housemaid saw him staring at an anthill in the garden, she made reference to a famous prolific novelist living nearby when she said (it is reported), “What a pity Mr. Darwin doesn’t have a way to pass his time, like Mr. Thackeray.”
Pioneers in science only rarely make discoveries by extracting ideas from pure mathematics. Most of the stereotypical photographs of scientists studying rows of equations written on blackboards are instructors explaining discoveries already made. Real progress comes in the field writing notes, at the office amid a litter of doodled paper, in the corridor struggling to explain something to a friend, at lunchtime, eating alone, or in a garden while walking. To have a eureka moment requires hard work. And focus. A distinguished researcher once commented to me that a real scientist is someone who
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Let’s call it Principle Number One: It is far easier for scientists to acquire needed collaboration from mathematicians and statisticians than it is for mathematicians and statisticians to find scientists able to make use of their equations.
Only those linked solidly to knowledge of real living systems have much chance of being used.
Such is markedly true in fields built largely upon the amassing of data, including, for example, taxonomy, ecology, biogeography, geology, and archaeology. At the same time, think twice about specializing in fields that require a close alternation of experiment and quantitative analysis. These include the greater part of physics and chemistry, as well as a few specialties within molecular biology.
scientific journals. What does my story mean to you? A great deal. I believe that other experienced scientists would agree with me that when you are selecting a domain of knowledge in which to conduct original research,
it is wise to look for one that is sparsely inhabited.
March away from the sound of the guns. Observe the fray from a distance, and while you are at it, consider making your own fray.
But on a far smaller scale, in fields and subjects less advanced, a small squad of researchers, even a single individual, can with effort devise an important experiment at relatively low cost.
Very imp
every problem in a given discipline of science, there exists a species or other entity or phenomenon ideal for its solution. (Example: a kind of mollusk, the sea hare Aplysia, proved ideal for exploring the cellular base of memory.) Conversely, for every species or other entity or phenomenon, there exist important problems for the solution of which it is ideally suited. (Example: bats were logical for the discovery of sonar.)
This is almost counter intuitive
From chemical suppliers I obtained pure synthetic samples of various decomposition substances, including skatole, the essence of feces; trimethylamine, the dominant odor of rotting fish; and various fatty acids and their esters of a kind found in dead insects.
These opinions, or just logical guesses as they often are, are the hypotheses. It is wise at the outset to figure out as many different solutions as seem possible, then test the whole, either one at a time or in bunches, eliminating all but one. This is called the method of multiple competing hypotheses.
wrong. The failure of the creation stories is further evidence that the mysteries of the universe and the human mind cannot be solved by unaided intuition.
As a scientist, keep your mind open to any possible phenomenon remaining in the great unknown. But never forget that your profession is exploration of the real world, with no preconceptions or idols of the mind accepted, and testable truth the only coin of the realm.
pleasure drawn from discovery of new truths, the scientist is part poet, and by pleasure drawn from new ways to express old truths, the poet is part scientist.
THE EXPLORERS CLUB of New York was founded in 1904 to celebrate the geographical exploration of the world and (later) outer space. Over the years the roster has included Robert Peary, Roald Amundsen, Theodore Roosevelt, Ernest Shackleton, Richard Byrd, Charles Lindbergh, Edmund Hillary, John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin, and other famous adventurers of the twentieth century.
know what they eat.” I liked the way Bill Brown addressed me as a colleague, albeit one in training, like a sergeant instructing a private. If we had been in the U.S. Marines, I suppose I would have followed him to hell and back—or something like that, assuming there are ants living somewhere in hell. In spite of my young age and lack of experience, he expected me to behave as a professional entomologist. He insisted that I just get out there and get the job done. There was no hint of “get in touch with your feelings” or “think about what you’d most like to do.” So, pumped up with his
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Really putting that scientist cap on
When I was a young scientist we had many fossils to study, some dating back to more than fifty million years before the present, but every species represented had worker castes. Of the origin of their social organization we knew nothing.
When she appeared I knew we had made the right decision. She breezed through the first-year basic requirements. By the end of the year she already had a clear idea of what she wished to do for her Ph.D. thesis.
TO MAKE DISCOVERIES in science, both small and important, you must be an expert on the topics addressed. To be an expert innovator requires commitment. Commitment to a subject implies sustained hard work.
Switching to a very different subject, X-ray crystallography, we have James D. Watson’s characterization of Max Perutz and Lawrence Bragg. It is in The Double Helix, arguably the best memoir ever written by a scientist, a book I recommend to any young person who wants to experience almost personally the thrill of scientific discovery.
Read this book
MAKE IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES anywhere in science, it is necessary not only to acquire a broad knowledge of the subject that interests you, but also the ability to spot blank spaces in that knowledge. Deep ignorance, when properly handled, is also superb opportunity. The right question is intellectually superior to finding the right answer. When conducting research, it is not uncommon
There must be by definition somewhere on Earth a site with the greatest variety of organisms. The Yasuni National Park of Ecuador, which encloses a magnificent rain forest between the Rio Napo and Rio Curaray, is reputed to be that one biologically richest place on Earth.
The first is the theory of chemical communication. The vast majority of plants, animals, and microorganisms communicate by chemicals, called pheromones, which are smelled or tasted.
Let me pause here to describe an easy way for you to smell an alarm pheromone yourself. Catch a honeybee from a flower in a handkerchief or other soft cloth. Squeeze the crumpled cloth gently. The bee will sting the cloth, and as it draws away it will leave the sting (which has reverse barbs) stuck in the cloth. When that happens, the immobile sting pulls out part of the bee’s internal organs. Let the bee move to the side, then crush the sting and the organs between two fingers. You will smell an odor that resembles the essence of banana. Its source is a mixture of acetates and alcohols in a
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Woah
