Prose

Curiosity, Patience, Care, Thoughtfulness, Sense, Feeling, Open-Mindedness, Time. It is a pity that most people think a scientist is a specialized person in a special situation, like a lawyer, or a diplomat. To practice law, you must be admitted to the bar. To practice diplomacy, you must be admitted to the department of state. To practice science, you need only curiosity, patience, thoughtfulness, and time. The scientist's effort to understand the workings of the world has two sides, on the one hand, he performs experiments on bits of the world,to find out how those bits behave. He makes the assumption that another bit of the, similar to the one he examines, ought to behave in the same way. For this reason he demands that a valid experiment shall be " repeatable " anyone else, told how to perform the same experiment, must be able to repeat it in any other part of the world and get the same result. This demand distinguishes his experiments from those of people who claim to tip tables without touching them, to see the future before it occurs, or to transfer thoughts into other persons minds without using the usual means of communication. So far, those people have not described their experiments in such a way that others can repeat them. On the other hand, the scientist's activities also include a great deal of thinking, and of visualizing things in his mind's eye. While he is engaging in this side of his work, he is not looking at the real world as directly as he does his experiments. He is trying to bring the experiments done either by himself or by others, into some kind of orderly relationship, to derive from them a way of thinking that includes them all. Out of these efforts come "pictures of fact" and "laws of nature" way's of organising physical experiences in the mind so that they can all be thought about together, as if they were related experiences. It is only when he has succeeded in finding such organizing principles that the scientist feels satisfied, happy, and ready to move on to another problem. Here again the scientist makes his demand that an experiment be repeatable. He requires that his visualization and thoughts should satisfy others as well as himself. Of a visualization, others must say, "yes, that seems reasonable." Of a thought, they must say, "yes,that is logical." This requirement distinguishes his thinking from that of "crackpots" who, as Albert Einstein once wrote, " place the existing science in denial." Indeed the inclusive visualization, the reasonable simplification, the logical deduction, are the ingredients of both truth and beauty in the scientist's inner world. You may even hear him say of some physical theory, "The theory is so beautiful that it must be true" For both his experimenting and his thinking, the scientist's way of training himself are very similar. In order to acquire a clean, quick, reliable laboratory technique, he practices performing experiments which others have done before him. When he can reproduce the results obtained by more experienced workers, he is ready to perform experiments not previously attempted. Similarly he practices thinking. In order to develop sharp, dependable intellectual tools, he works problems whose answers have been obtained by others. When he can duplicate some of the thinking done by his predecessors, he is ready to think for himself.