Abstract
There is one component that, but for a few intimations, has been conspicuously missing from the description of the Haze: the role of curiosity in scientific research.
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There is one component that, but for a few intimations, has been conspicuously missing from the description of the Haze: the role of curiosity in scientific research.
Why was it not included as an element of fundamental significance? Is science not driven by deeply curious individuals striving for the best version of the truth they can describe, themselves compelled largely by passion or interest?
There is certainly a perception that curiosity is at the core of why one would choose, over the course of years or decades, to commit one’s self to the pursuit of a seemingly esoteric tidbit of information. There are, therefore, several reasons to dispel this notion. At the end of the day, Scientists are people who must pay their bills, prepare dinner, and navigate life’s snags just like everyone else. Society invests vast resources at all levels of research from basic to applied, and it is done with the expectation of a professional conversion of these means into results. Sometimes there is precious little room for curiosity because the problems are too complex and require mature, nuanced approaches to solve them. Scientists are, after all, not children. I do not mean this in a flippant way, as children have a reason to be curious: they are at a stage in life where their development is driven by determining what works and what does not in order to amass a body of tacit knowledge that allows them to function in everyday life. But children are not charged with making concrete contributions to society, and so they are just fine in that short, whimsical stint in life in which curiosity is at the center of so many things.
However, curiosity as the main driver of scientific activity is too idealistic.
Curiosity no doubt plays a role in science and is closely connected to creativity, especially in the non-mission oriented research of Chap. 17. This was illustrated concretely in Part II, Chap. 10, where Haber saw ammonia synthesis as having technological and market potential, but also as basic research contributing to the understanding of the free energy. It was something that fascinated him. There have been scientists—or natural philosophers—who could attribute a larger share of their motivation to curiosity than many can today.Footnote 1 These were the few who had access to adequate and uncritical financial support and who had the correct disposition to be compelled by interest alone. Out of all of them, even fewer were able to employ this strategy throughout their careers. One may refer to them as lucky, not in the sense that they were allowed to be curious, but rather that several factors combined in a way that allowed them to practice science in the way best suited for them. Often though, the complexities of real scientific pursuits force compromise, no matter the researcher’s disposition. Even today’s top researchers do not have the luxury of exclusively following their own curiosity. There are so many factors leading to success that curiosity, in the end, should be considered a good (or even essential) motivator, or as a part of strategy to derive energy for the day-to-day challenge of staying focused. Curiosity can draw someone back to a subject, a sample, or a theory, but it does not represent a complete strategy for obtaining a full description of a system and formulating practical answers to basic questions about that system’s behavior. There are too many critical details and high expectations which require less fascination and more drudge work, but which must be considered nonetheless. The merely curious person would simply neglect these tasks.
Science is, instead, driven by other factors: pride, a human need to know, the enjoyment and gratification of successful puzzle-solving, or the creation of elegance and beauty. There is also competition, which manifests itself internally (as a desire for renown or recognition as The One who made the discovery, and also through peer review and publication) and externally (through competition for limited funds and positions). Opportunities are kept at a critical level in research to afford a certain degree of knowledge generation while also narrowing the playing field to force out those actors who are not considered to be producing enough knowledge, or the right kind.
These can be summed up as ambition. Ambition to solve a problem or to gain insight. Or in some cases, to proliferate one’s self and move up the hierarchy.
We often confuse this with curiosity.
To disentangle them we return to a central theme of this book: knowledge and how it is produced, moved, combined, and recombined. In science, an often meandering enterprise, curiosity alone will not produce a complete knowledge set. But ambition can if it is based on a sense of duty to solve a problem or gain insight. The word “ambition” often has a negative connotation, as if any success achieved need not be based on merit; a more positive word is “aspiration.” However, ambition can be positive and we need ambitious research agendas and ambitious ideas to tackle those agendas. We just should not go too far because comparatively little knowledge will be produced if the only ambition is to receive recognition, especially in cases where the results only appear to be useful at first. Before we have the correct answer, things in science may seem to fit together in any number of ways, due perhaps to the complexity of the problem, to limited contextual knowledge, or because someone has successfully convinced us that their answer is the correct one. To be sure, the latter has no impact on the inherent scientific value of that element of knowledge. As long as we continue the scientific endeavor, however, the pieces will eventually fall into place.
We may not be able to fully control the Haze, but we can tip the probability of condensation in our favor. Despite the random occurrence of decisive events in science, their outcomes can be understood in retrospect. Regarding past scientific discoveries, a nucleating effect can be derived from the knowledge base, especially in the hands of inventive or resolute minds, positioned and willing to take a risk. An active center is formed from the successful synthesis of ideas on which later concepts and conclusions can condense, accompanied and facilitated by the rigor of deduction and mathematical abstraction. We understand and can do these things well. It is only a matter of positioning ourselves at a point likely to seed the next discovery.
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Johnson, B. (2022). One Final Element. In: Making Ammonia. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85532-1_22
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