Discovery Awaits the Mind That Pursues It
Every master needs a repertoire. Jazz players, tennis players, chess players and more, all have a repertoire. A repertoire has two parts: content and skills. When I graduated with my Ph.D. in physics I thought I had a sufficient repertoire to be able to return to the question…
I’m finding the most difficult (and intimidating) part of pursuing discovery to be coming up with new ideas, at least on days when my “systematic mind” is team lead. On these days I stick to knowns and try to refit combinations of knowns, or incrementally push ideas a little…
I have in mind a way to foster cross-pollination and more interdisciplinary interaction among the sciences (both physical and social). Initially, I had a hunch that such cross-pollination might be the key to my own discovery efforts as well as to that of others. This is a little bit…
How do I set my mind to make a scientific discovery? And why bother? I suppose it goes back to my Ph.D. advisor’s old advice, “work on the problems that keep you up at night.” Many years ago I heard a fascinating idea proposed in neutrino physics, one that…