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