“Scientists often describe the autotelic aspects of their work as the exhilaration that comes from the pursuit of truth and of beauty. What they seem to describe, however, is the joy of discovery, of solving a problem, of being able to express an observed relationship in a simple and elegant form. So what is rewarding is not a mysterious and ineffable goal but the activity of science itself. It is the pursuit that counts, not the attainment.”
―
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention
