Read Online Letters to a Young Scientist by Edward O. Wilson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Edward O. Wilson
Tags: science, Non-Fiction
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butterflies. It threw me into confusion. The only familiar species I found in it was the Cabbage White, a species accidentally introduced from Europe many years previously. The reason for my confusion, I learned later, was the book was about British butterflies.
My future was set. Ellis and I agreed we were going to be entomologists when we grew up. We delved into college-level textbooks, which we could scarcely read, although we tried very hard. One that we checked out from a public library and worked on page by page was Robert E. Snodgrass’s formidable Principles of Insect Morphology , published in 1935. Only later did I learn that grown-up biologists were using it as a technical reference book. We visited the insect collections on display at the awesome National Museum of Natural History, aware that professional entomologists were curators there. I never saw one of these demigods (one was Snodgrass himself), but just knowing they were there as part of the United States government gave me hope that one day I might ascend to this unimaginably high level.
Returning in 1940 with my family to Mobile, I plunged into the rich new fauna of butterflies. The semitropical climate and nearby swamps were a close realization of my earlier dreams. To the red admirals, painted ladies, great spangled fritillaries, and mourning cloaks characteristic of the more northern climes I added snout butterflies, Gulf fritillaries, Brazilian skippers, great purple hairstreaks, and several magnificent swallowtails—giant, zebra, and spicebush.
Then I turned to ants, monomaniacally determined to find every kind living in the weed-grown vacant lot next to our large family house on Charleston Street. I didn’t know the scientific names of the species, but I do now, and the location of every colony in the quarter-acre space is vivid in my memory: the Argentine ant ( Linepithema humile ), which nested in the rotting wooden fence at the edge of the lot in the winter and spread out among the weeds during the warm months; large black ants ( Odontomachus brunneus ) with snapping jaws and vicious stings, which inhabited a pile of roof shingles at the far corner beneath a fig tree; a huge mound-dwelling colony of the red imported fire ant ( Solenopsis invicta ) that I found at the edge of the lot next to the street; and a colony of a tiny yellow species ( Pheidole floridana ) nesting beneath an old whiskey bottle.
Three years later, as nature counselor at Pushmataha, I transitioned into a snake period, and began catching as many as I could find of the dozens of species that inhabit southwestern Alabama.
I’ve gone into this boyhood story to make a point that may be relevant to your own career trajectory. I have never changed .
Planned path of the Mars rover Curiosity in Gale Crater. “NASA picks Mars landing site,” by Eric Hand, Nature 475: 433 (July 28, 2011). Modified from photograph by NASA/JPL-CALTECH/ASU/UA.
Nine
A RCHETYPES OF THE S CIENTIFIC M IND
T HE BETTER EMOTIONS of our nature are felt and examined and understood more deeply during maturity, but they are born and rage in full intensity during childhood and adolescence. Thereafter they endure through the rest of life, serving as the wellsprings of creative work.
I told you earlier that during the earliest steps to discovery the ideal scientist thinks like a poet. Only later does he work at the bookkeeping expected of his profession. I spoke of passion and decent ambition as forces that drive us to creative work. The love of a subject, and I say it again for emphasis, is meritorious in itself. By pleasure drawn from discovery of new truths, the scientist is part poet, and by pleasure drawn from new ways to express old truths, the poet is part scientist. In this sense science and the creative arts are foundationally the same.
I could say more to you about the metaphorical temple of science, could speak of its infinite chambers and galleries, could offer you additional instructions on
My future was set. Ellis and I agreed we were going to be entomologists when we grew up. We delved into college-level textbooks, which we could scarcely read, although we tried very hard. One that we checked out from a public library and worked on page by page was Robert E. Snodgrass’s formidable Principles of Insect Morphology , published in 1935. Only later did I learn that grown-up biologists were using it as a technical reference book. We visited the insect collections on display at the awesome National Museum of Natural History, aware that professional entomologists were curators there. I never saw one of these demigods (one was Snodgrass himself), but just knowing they were there as part of the United States government gave me hope that one day I might ascend to this unimaginably high level.
Returning in 1940 with my family to Mobile, I plunged into the rich new fauna of butterflies. The semitropical climate and nearby swamps were a close realization of my earlier dreams. To the red admirals, painted ladies, great spangled fritillaries, and mourning cloaks characteristic of the more northern climes I added snout butterflies, Gulf fritillaries, Brazilian skippers, great purple hairstreaks, and several magnificent swallowtails—giant, zebra, and spicebush.
Then I turned to ants, monomaniacally determined to find every kind living in the weed-grown vacant lot next to our large family house on Charleston Street. I didn’t know the scientific names of the species, but I do now, and the location of every colony in the quarter-acre space is vivid in my memory: the Argentine ant ( Linepithema humile ), which nested in the rotting wooden fence at the edge of the lot in the winter and spread out among the weeds during the warm months; large black ants ( Odontomachus brunneus ) with snapping jaws and vicious stings, which inhabited a pile of roof shingles at the far corner beneath a fig tree; a huge mound-dwelling colony of the red imported fire ant ( Solenopsis invicta ) that I found at the edge of the lot next to the street; and a colony of a tiny yellow species ( Pheidole floridana ) nesting beneath an old whiskey bottle.
Three years later, as nature counselor at Pushmataha, I transitioned into a snake period, and began catching as many as I could find of the dozens of species that inhabit southwestern Alabama.
I’ve gone into this boyhood story to make a point that may be relevant to your own career trajectory. I have never changed .
Planned path of the Mars rover Curiosity in Gale Crater. “NASA picks Mars landing site,” by Eric Hand, Nature 475: 433 (July 28, 2011). Modified from photograph by NASA/JPL-CALTECH/ASU/UA.
Nine
A RCHETYPES OF THE S CIENTIFIC M IND
T HE BETTER EMOTIONS of our nature are felt and examined and understood more deeply during maturity, but they are born and rage in full intensity during childhood and adolescence. Thereafter they endure through the rest of life, serving as the wellsprings of creative work.
I told you earlier that during the earliest steps to discovery the ideal scientist thinks like a poet. Only later does he work at the bookkeeping expected of his profession. I spoke of passion and decent ambition as forces that drive us to creative work. The love of a subject, and I say it again for emphasis, is meritorious in itself. By pleasure drawn from discovery of new truths, the scientist is part poet, and by pleasure drawn from new ways to express old truths, the poet is part scientist. In this sense science and the creative arts are foundationally the same.
I could say more to you about the metaphorical temple of science, could speak of its infinite chambers and galleries, could offer you additional instructions on
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