• focus: Focus is the ability to spot the crux among a morass of detail and then stay concentrated
on it, without being distracted or sidetracked. Focus assures that the target receives all of the attention needed. Lack of focus is evidenced by tendencies toward incompleteness, inefficiency, overlooked significant details, grasshopper science, and panic reaction to setbacks.
Thanks to physicist Richard Feynman [1985], I now associate focus with chocolate pudding. During a period of his life when he went out to dinner frequently, a waiter asked him what he would like for dessert. Suddenly he considered how much of his life was wasted in thinking about that trivial question, so he decided that henceforth the answer would always be chocolate pudding! Focus does not tolerate needless distractions.
• balance between skepticism and receptivity: A critical attitude is essential; all data and interpretations must be evaluated rather than simply accepted. Yet it is equally essential to achieve a balance between skepticism and receptivity: willingness to propose speculative hypotheses that may be proved wrong, tempered by ability to weed out the incorrect hypotheses. One must be receptive to novel concepts or results, rather than greeting the new with a ‘fight-or-flight’ reaction of dismissive criticism. The critical filter that rejects everything as insufficiently proved robs science both of joy and of raw materials for progress.
This balance is manifest also by a blend of optimism and realism. Optimism and enthusiasm for new ideas are contagious and powerful, if accompanied not by a casual confidence that effort alone will find a solution, but by a problem-solving mentality and preparation for potential obstacles.
Common Characteristics
Many prospective scientists think that love of science and high intelligence are the two primary characteristics needed to permit them to be successful scientists. This idealized picture of science can lead to disillusionment or worse. Love of science and high intelligence are neither necessary nor sufficient, though they are the springboard of most scientific careers.
• fascination with the beauty of nature: We may not use words such as ‘beauty of nature’; we may try (at least outwardly) to maintain the myth of objectivity. Yet we revel in the elegance and wonder of the natural world, and we choose occupations that further our opportunities for appreciation of it.
“I am among those who think that science has great beauty. . . A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician but also a child placed in front of natural phenomena which impresses him like a fairy tale.” [Marie Curie, 1937]
Konrad Lorenz [1962] described the prerequisites to success in the field of animal behavior as follows:
“To really understand animals and their behavior you must have an esthetic appreciation of an animal’s beauty. This endows you with the patience to look at them long enough to see something. Without that joy in just looking, not even a yogi would have the patience. But combined with this purely esthetic characteristic, you must have an analytical mind.”
