Matthiessen [1978] says that the Buddha “cried out in pity for a yogin by the river who had wasted twenty years of his human existence in learning how to walk on water, when the ferryman might have taken him across for a small coin.”
Persistence in a technically difficult experiment is commendable; persistence in investigating a discredited hypothesis is not. If advocacy of an opinion has become counterproductive, then adapt. Nevertheless, far more scientists have failed because of insufficient persistence than because of excessive persistence.
“. . . let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” [Hebrews 12:1]
• curiosity: The desire to know more, an inquisitiveness that is not satisfied with surface explanations, is the ratchet of scientific progress.
Jonas Salk [1990] said that he spent his life “reading the scriptures of nature. . . I began to tease out the logic of the magic that I was so impressed by.”
The scientist’s curiosity is not passive; it is an active embrace of nature:
“I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.” [Dillard, 1974]
• self-motivation: Internal drive to work is a product of job enjoyment. Self-motivation is scarce in most types of jobs [Terkel, 1974], frequent in professions, and nearly universal among productive scientists. Single-minded drive undoubtedly increases effort, but self-motivation seems to have more impact than effort can account for. Self-motivated scientists, who may do only part-time research because of teaching or administrative responsibilities, can produce more than full-time scientists who have lost their internal drive (e.g., because management does not value their work).
Self-motivation can be overdone: I and many scientists whom I know are stress junkies, who are stimulated so much by ‘emergencies’ that they seem to create such situations even when a rapid pace is unnecessary. To a stress junkie, efficiency and productivity are additional sources of job satisfaction.
Volcanologist Maurice Krafft, who was later killed by Unzen Volcano, said “ I would say that if one truly specializes in explosive volcanoes then it’s not worth contributing towards retirement, and that if one makes it to retirement it’s a little suspicious. It means that he really didn’t do his job conscientiously.” [Williams and Montaigne, 2001]
Productivity has become a cliché of the business world, but productivity is not just a national or industrial goal. It is a personal skill. Computer expertise and efficient fact finding are tangible forms of individual scientific productivity; more essential and less tangible aspects are problemsolving ability, quantitative reasoning, and self-motivation. Quantity of publications is the most commonly used measure of productivity [Maddox, 1993]. Its virtues are simplicity and objectivity, but scientific impact does not depend on number of publications.
“Every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. The personal commitment of a man to his skill, the intellectual commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man.” [Bronowski, 1973]
