The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

by Richard Hamming

If, on the average campus, you asked a sample of professors what they were going to do in the next class hour, you would hear they were going to “teach partial fractions,” “show how to find the moments of a normal distribution,” “explain Young’s modulus and how to measure it,” etc. I doubt you would often hear a professor say, “I am going to educate the students and prepare them for their future careers.” You may claim in both cases the larger aim was so well understood there was no need to mention it, but I doubt you really believe it. Most of the time each person is immersed in the details of one special part of the whole and does not think of how what they are doing relates to the larger picture. It is characteristic of most people to keep a myopic view of their work and seldom, if ever, connect it with the larger aims they will admit, when pressed hard, are the true goals of the system. This myopic view is the chief characteristic of a bureaucrat. To rise to the top you should have the larger view—at least when you get there.