Article Type : Opinion Article
Authors : Levintov A
Keywords : Scientific producing; Ad hoc; Solitude; Detachment
Despite the fact that science is becoming an
increasingly mass activity and an increasingly technologized activity, the role
of each individual scientist is becoming more and more important. One of the
most important conditions for scientific work is the solitude, ad hoc and
detachment of the scientist. This should be taken into account by scientific
producers and managers of science.
The concept
"collective mental activity" was developed and introduced into
scientific, philosophical, and methodological usage by G. P. Shchedrovitsky and
his followers. Science is a complexly organized collective activity
characterized by a number of features:
· Scientific
technologies are quite flexible even in the most rigorous academic disciplines;
· Science
is based not on facts and practice, but on theoretical grounds, which is often
expressed in the idea "if the facts contradict my theory, it is so much worse
for the facts" [1];
· Science
represents two most important processes: search (literary, bibliographic,
informational, statistical, expeditionary, etc.) and reflection (theoretical,
typological, notional, conceptual, etc.) - of search or research; since both
processes are usually carried out by the same person, there is no hope that
search can be redirected to robots, cyborgs and computers;
· The
role of a scientist, his personality and talent; this role is noticeable and
expressive even in very large and crowded developments;
The role of chance is very important in science;
it is normal when search and all the intellectual efforts of a group of
scientists, conducted sometimes for many years, turn out to be in vain and
fruitless – this should be treated coolly and calmly, since these efforts make
up the most part of the research work; everything happens by chance, but
special conditions are needed for this chance to happen: solitude and
detachment [2].
Science producing differs from any other
producing and entrepreneurship in that, in addition to the standard toolkit of
production functions (financial, organizational, PR, etc.), it must provide
conditions for the emergence of ad hoc [3]. P. Feyerabend described ad hoc (for
a particular purpose) most fully as a phenomenon of scientific life [4,5].
Archimedes' ad hoc happened when he was taking a bath alone and realized how to
measure the volume of a complex piece of jewelry made of pure gold with the
help of the law discovered by him: "anybody completely or partially
submerged in water [gas or liquid] is equal to the weight of the fluid
displaced by the body". Undoubtedly, Archimedes was not focused on this
particular law. He tried to find out whether the goldsmith mixed foreign metal
with gold when forging the crown of King Hieron II. Galileo's ad hoc was a task
he received from the Tuscan Duke Cosimo II de Medici, who wanted to be in the
thick of the battle and safe at the same time. Galileo, just as Leonardo da
Vinci, the Dutchman Leeuwenhoek, Kepler, and Newton after Galileo, was crafting
a telescope with consecutively arranged lenses. He preferred to do this in
solitude at night. A cat was another midnighter constantly spinning under his
feet. Pushing the purr away, Galileo accidentally touched the invention with
his elbow and suddenly saw through the telescope the sky and the moon,
mountains and craters similar to the Earth's. At that time, the rotation of the
Earth around its axis was disproved by the simple consideration that in this
case, stones from the mountains should fall only in the evenings, while they
roll down at any time of the day. The heliocentric theory and the spherical
shape were then considered eccentric, contradicting the authority of Aristotle
and Ptolemy. Observing the movement and rotation of the planets in his
telescope, Galileo concluded that a geocentric world was impossible, but we
remember that he made an appliance that allowed the duke to be in the thick of
the battle and safe simultaneously. According to the legend, Dmitry Mendeleev
dreamed of his periodic table of chemical elements in the form of a solitaire
which was the chemist’s hobby: "They say that in search of connections
that unite the elements into a single foundation of the universe, Mendeleev wrote
names of the elements on one side of business cards, and on the other – their
atomic weight and formulas of the main compounds. For hours in his office, he
shifted this chemical "solitaire", arranging the elements according
to their properties in logical rows. In the end, as a chess player, he imagined
in his mind the entire field consisting of sixty-three cells [this is the
number of the elements known at that time], where the elements were to be
placed. But none of the options satisfied him. One day, in a dream he saw the
very order which he was unable to find in waking life. The vision was so clear
and precise that he woke up and wrote it down on a piece of paper. In the
morning the periodic table was ready" [6,7]. The story of solitude is told
about Isaac Newton and an apple that fell on his head on his parents' farm,
about the ship's doctor Robert Mayer who discovered the law of conservation of
energy, comparing blood tests of sailors taken in temperate and equatorial
latitudes, about Steve Hawking, who turned over the physical ontology of the
universe, sitting in a compartment of a commuter train. In fact, there are many
examples of this kind, and one can also refer to personal experience: from time
to time, in expeditions, there are situations in which all actions are
impossible. I call these situations "an action crisis", and I really
appreciate it when these states happen. Finding oneself in an action crisis, a
person (that is me) must calm down, stop fussing around and look for a way out
of this situation, go deeper into reflection and reasoning, for example, while
listening to good music or gazing at an inspiring landscape, then just doze off
and fall asleep. The most wonderful, beautiful, and unusual solutions, not to a
specific situation but of more general and abstract nature, come to the mind in
this very state of an action crisis. While a specific situation usually
resolves quickly enough as soon as new thoughts and ideas have emerged and
exhausted themselves. They say that God helps only those who are focused on a
particular problem and slips in an ad hoc solution to the seeker at the right
time.
In the conditions of collective scientific activity, a science producer is obliged to organize a scientist's workspace in such a way that is not just secluded but methodologically oriented and coordinated. A layout of methodologically arranged activity was proposed by R. Descartes [2] (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Layout of methodologically arranged workspace for scientific activity (according to R. Descartes).
Scientific activity is
not time-bound, it can be carried out at any time of the day or night, in
moments, flashes, short intervals, continuously, or with any iteration
frequency, most often when being alone, but it can also unwrap dialogically, in
the laboratory, in a pub, at night when dreaming or being sleepless. This
flexibility of conditions and environment, unpredictability and dependence on
chance require patience and composure from scientists, their scientific
management and science producer. However, subject knowledge, an array of tools,
and work arrangements should be at hand and accessible at all times.
Arrangement of the research workspace is the prerogative of a scientific
producer and manager, but it should take into account individual
characteristics of contractors: someone cannot work without music, someone
needs deadly silence, someone requires presence of pretty and young girls,
someone is inspired by the outside landscape, but all these things should
contribute to achieving concentration, and depth, detachment.
The definition of detachment is probably the key. Detachment is a state of a scientist himself: science producer or science manager cannot be included here. Detachment is a kind of sterilization of a scientist's communication channel with the Navigator, release from interference and noise. Detachment is a necessary state similar to an action crisis. It is a voluntary refusal to search for solutions except the only one, detaching from all socio-cultural connections and contacts which are external interferences and noise, a manifestation of trust to the Navigator, who is complicated to describe and therefore is most often perceived intuitively as a teacher, an opponent, God, Cosmic consciousness or any other external subject. An induction/creative circuit is established between the scientist and the Navigator (Figure 2).
Figure 2: The induction/creative circuit of the dialog between the scientist and the Navigator.
It is important to
point out that the roles of an "induction coil" (L) and a
"capacitor" (C) are performed by the scientist and the Navigator
alternately and at random. A scientist as a subject of research often finds it
difficult to indicate if it is they or the Navigator who makes the necessary
push forward, and this is why they often mention a fallen apple, a cat under
feet, a dream, a junction of train cars, a punch of a billiard ball.