Edward O. Wilson, nicht ganz unbekannter Harvard-Zoologe und Altmeister der Soziobiologie, erklärte unlängst in einem NPR-Interview den „idealen Wissenschaftler“ folgendermaßen:

[…] the ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper.

It’s the poet, the poetic aspects of science, that seldom get talked about. But I’ve always felt that scientists fantasize and dream and bring up metaphor and fantastic images as much as any poet, as anyone in the creative sciences — art, the creative arts.

And the difference is that at some point, the scientist has to relate the dreams to the real world, and that’s when you enter the bookkeeper’s period. Unfortunately, it’s the bookkeeper period which leads sometimes to months or years of hard work that too many prospective scientists and students interested in science see, rather than the creative period.

In meiner Doktorarbeit ließ sich die „poetische Phase“ auf ein paar wenige Tage runterbrechen. Diesen Beitrag weiterlesen »