Advice to young scientists E.O. Wilson

what i’m going to do is to just

give a few notes

uh and this is from a book i’m preparing

called

letters to a young scientist

and i thought it would be appropriate to

present it

on the basis that i have had extensive

experience in teaching counseling

sciences across the broad array of

fields

and you might like to hear some of the

principles that i’ve developed in doing

that teaching and counseling so let me

begin uh by urging you particularly you

on the youngster side on this path

you’ve chosen and to go as far as you

can

the world needs you

badly

humanity is now fully into the text of

scientific age

there’s going to be no turning back

uh although varying among disciplines

say astrophysics molecular genetics

immunology the microbiology the public

health to the new

area of the human body of the symbiont

to public health environmental science

knowledge in medical science and science

overall is doubling every 15 to 20 years

technology is increasing at a comparable

rate between them the two already

pervaded as most of you here seated

realize every dimension of human life so

swift is the velocity

of the techno-scientific revolution

so startling and it’s countless twists

and turns that no one can predict its

outcome

even a decade

from the present moment there will come

a time of course

when the exponential growth of discovery

and knowledge which actually began in

the 1600s

has to peak and level off but that’s not

going to matter to you the revolution is

going to continue

for at least several more decades it

will render the human condition

radically different from what it is

today

traditional fields of study

are going to continue to grow

and in so doing inevitably they will

meet and create new disciplines

in time all of science will come to be a

continuum of description

and explanation of networks of

principles and laws that’s why you need

not just be training in one specialty

but also acquire breadth

in other fields related to and even

distance from your own initial choice

keep your eyes lifted

and your head turning the thirst for

knowledge is in our genes

it was put there by our distant

ancestors who spread across the world

and it’s never going to be quenched

to understand and use it

sanely as a part of the civilization

yet to evolve requires a vastly larger

population of scientifically trained

people

like you

in education medicine law diplomacy

government business and the media that

exists today our political leaders need

at least a modest degree of scientific

literacy which most badly lack today no

applause please

uh it will be better for all if they

prepared before entering

office rather than learning on the job

therefore you will do well to act on the

side no matter how far into the

laboratory you may go

to service teachers during the span of

your career i’ll now proceed quickly and

before else to a subject that is both a

vital asset a potential barrier to a

scientific career if you are a bit short

in mathematical skills don’t worry

many of the most successful scientists

that work today are mathematically

semi-literate a metaphor

will serve here

where elite mathematicians and

statisticians and theorists often serve

as architects in the expanding realm

of science the remaining large majority

of basic applied scientists

including a large portion of those who

could be

said to be of the first rank are the

ones who map the terrain they scout the

frontiers they cut the pathways they

raise the buildings along the way some

maybe it may have considered me

foolhardy but it’s been my habit to

brush aside the fear of mathematics when

talking to candidate scientists during

41 years of teaching biology at harvard

i watched sadly as bright students

turned away

from the possibility of a scientific

career or even from taking

non-required courses in science because

they were afraid of failure

these math folks deprive science and

medicine of immeasurable amounts of

badly needed talent

here’s how to relax your anxieties if

you have them understand that

mathematics is a language ruled like

other

verbal languages unlike verbal language

generally by its own grammar

and system of logic any person with

average quantitative intelligent

intelligence who learns to read and

write mathematics

at an elementary level will as in verbal

languages have little difficulty picking

up most of the fundamentals if they

choose to master the math speak of most

disciplines of science the longer you

wait to become at least semi-literate

the harder language

of mathematics will be to master just as

again in any verbal language but it can

be done at any age i speak as an

authority on that subject because i’m an

extreme case i didn’t take algebra until

my freshman year at the university of

alabama they didn’t teach it

before then i finally got around the

calculus as a 32 year old tenured

professor at harvard where i sat

uncomfortably in classes with

undergraduate students a little more

than half my age a couple of them were

students in a course i was giving on

evolutionary biology i swear i swallowed

my pride

and i learned calculus i found out that

in science and all its applications what

is crucial

is not that technical ability but it is

imagination and all of its applications

the ability to form concepts with images

of entities and processes pictured by

intuition i found out that advances in

science rarely come upstream

from an ability to stand in a blackboard

and conjure images from unfolding

mathematical proposition and equations

they are instead the products of

downstream imagination leading to hard

work during which mathematical reasoning

may or may not prove to be relevant

ideas emerge when a part of the real or

imagined world is studied for its own

sake

of foremost importance is a thorough

well-organized knowledge of all that is

known of the relevant entities and

processes that might be involved in that

domain you propose to enter

when something new is discovered is

logical then

that

one of the following up steps

is to find the mathematical and

statistical methods to move its analysis

forward if that step proves too

difficult

the person or team that made the

discovery

a

mathematician can then be added by them

as a collaborator consider the following

principle which i will modestly

call wilson’s principle number one

it is far easier for scientists

including medical researchers to require

needed collaboration in mathematics and

statistics

than it is for mathematicians and

statisticians to find scientists able to

make use of their equations

it’s important and in choosing the

direction you take in sciences to find

the subject of your level at your level

of competence that interests you deeply

and focus on that keep in mind then

wilson’s second principle

for every scientist whether researcher

technician

teacher manager or businessman

working at any level of mathematical

competence there exists a discipline in

science or medicine

for which that level is enough to

achieve excellence

now i’m going to offer quickly several

more principles that will be useful in

organizing your education a career or if

you’re teaching

to

how you might enhance your own teaching

and counseling of young sciences

in selecting a subject in which to

conduct original research or to develop

world-class expertise

take a part of the chosen discipline

that is sparsely inhabited

judge opportunity by how few other

students and researchers are on hand

this is not to de-emphasize the

essential requirement of broad training

or the value of apprenticing yourself

in ongoing research to programs of high

quality it is important also to acquire

older mentors within these successful

programs and to make friends and

colleagues of your age for mutual

support but through it all look for a

way to break out

to find the field and subject not yet

popular we have seen this demonstrated

already in the talks preceding mind

there is the quickest way advances are

likely to occur as measured in

discoveries per investigator per year

you may have heard the military dictum

for the gathering of armies

marched to the sound of the guns

in science the exact opposite is the

case march away from the sound of the

gun

so wilson’s principle number three

march away from the sound of the guns

observe from a distance but do not join

the fray

make a fray of your own

once you have settled

on especially

a specialty and the profession you can

love and you’ve secured opportunity

uh your potential to succeed will be

greatly enhanced if you study it enough

to become an expert

there are thousands of professionally

delimited subjects sprinkled through

physics and chemistry to biology and

medicine

and on then into the social sciences

where it is possible in short time

to acquire the status of us and

authority

when the subject is still very thinly

populated you can with diligence and

hard work become the world authority the

world needs this kind of

expertise and it rewards the kind of

people willing to acquire it

the existing information and what you

yourself discover may at first seem

skimpy

and difficult to connect to other bodies

of knowledge well if that’s the case

good

why hard instead of easy the answer

deserves to be stated

as principle number four

in the attempt to make scientific

discoveries every problem is an

opportunity and the more difficult the

problem the greater will be the

importance of its solution now this

brings me

to a basic categorization in the way

scientific discoveries are made

scientists pure mathematicians among

them

follow one or the other of two pathways

first through early discoveries a

problem is identified and a solution is

thought

the problem may be relatively small for

example where exactly in a cruise ship

does the norovirus begin to spread

or larger what’s the role of dark matter

in the expansion of the universe as the

answer is sought

other phenomena are typically discovered

and other questions are asked this first

of the two strategies is like a hunter

exploring a forest in search of a

particular quarry who finds other

quarries along the way the second

strategy

of research is to study a subject

broadly

searching for unknown phenomena or

patterns of known phenomena like a

hunter

in what we call the naturalist trance

the researcher mind is open to anything

interesting any quarry worth taking the

search is not for the solution of the

problem

but for problems themselves worth

solving the two strategies of research

original research can be stated as

follows

in

the final

principle i’m going to offer you

for every problem in a given discipline

of science there exists a species or

entity or phenomenon ideal for its

solution

and

conversely for every species or other

entity or phenomenon there exists

important problems

for the solution of which

those particular

objects of research are ideally suited

find out what they are

you’ll find your own way to discover

learn to teach the decades ahead we’ll

see dramatic advances and disease

prevention

general health the quality of life

all of humanity depends on the knowledge

and practice

of the medicine and the science behind

it you will master

you have chosen a calling that will come

in steps to give you satisfaction at its

conclusion

of a life wealth live and i thank you

for having me here tonight

thank you