Looking for inspiration in scientists

doi:10.15406/ijawb.2023.07.00200

International Journal of

eISSN: 2574-9862

Avian & Wildlife Biology

Opinion Volume 7 Issue 3

Looking for inspiration in scientists

Ignacio García Peiró

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Department of Ecology & Hydrology, Faculty of Biology, University of Murcia, Spain

Correspondence: Ignacio García Peiro, Department of Ecology & Hydrology, Faculty of Biology, University of Murcia, Spain, Tel +34965451777

Received: October 22, 2023 | Published: November 3, 2023

Citation: Peiró IG. Looking for inspiration in scientists. Int J Avian & Wildlife Biol. 2023;7(3):121. DOI: 10.15406/ijawb.2023.07.00200

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Abstract

Looking for inspiration in Zoologists always was a key theme among scientists. The best form to find it is working, although in some cases, the presence of good career tutors may serve as aid to take decisions about how to find a topic theme to work. Reading articles on-line can serve as a source of gathering new ideas already settled. Some highlight Zoologists received advice from Nobel awards tutors. Old ideas minted for them can be a starting point for generating new ideas in chain reaction. Also, talks with collaborators can act as a motivation factor to acquire new ideas, collating them and putting them in a sheet on the desktop or blackboard. Personally I think what inspires scientists is faith and belief in love, whether material or immaterial or simply in science per se.

Keywords: science, inspiration, scientists

Introduction

..... "And Isaac Newton had the apple fall on his head." This happened in the orchard of Woolsthorpe Manor, in the county of Lincolnshire in England, on September 3, 1760. This is a clear example that inspiration is not sought after but unpredictable. You don't know where it is, when it arrives, or how it arrives. What is certain is that, by working, it is the most likely to arrive. A clear example is Alexander Fleming's carelessness in not throwing a Petri dish in the trash. Why did he check the Petri dish and not throw it away directly? Perhaps the experience of checking for errors allowed him not to be so careless. This mishap of Flemming's reminds us that every hypothesis must be tested sooner or later. What can motivate a scientist to work? I think simply curiosity and also asking questions about a particular aspect that tries to go beyond an idea or hypothesis already previously postulated by other scientists in their articles. This going beyond needs a basis of new hypotheses, which could emerge as original or again adapted from other works. A good dose of intelligence is required to reject or accept good ideas. Nowadays science is mostly collaborative because ideas are simply better accepted or discarded by several people so it is often said that two see better than one in that succession. The ability to work in a collaborative manner is better to discriminate against very similar ideas.

I am basically a Zoologist. The fact that they also are scientists and some of them are also brilliant I put in context two cases of Nobel winners; firstly the zoologist and ethologist Konrad Lorenz that he used to say that you had to wake up discarding a pet hypothesis. Secondly, the Zoologist and co-discoverer of ADN James Watson with a personality outgoing and boisterous. His friend Francis Crick was considered more reserved, but arrogant. Both of them find inspiration through long-time cooperation.

The Neodarwinist Richard Dawkins in his book “The blind watchmaker”¹ says: “Some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs came about because an intelligent person discovered an analogy between an already understood subject and a still mysterious one. It is all in finding a balance between too indiscriminate analogies and sterile blindness fruitful ones. The successful scientist and the eccentric madman are separated by the quality of their inspirations, the difference lies not so much in observing analogies as in rejecting the absurd ones and pursuing the useful ones“.

Some undergraduates choose a university based on the number of Nobel Prize-winning professors with the intention that they can be a source of inspiration in their graduate studies. In the case of the anthropologist and evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers this was a fact,² but recent empirical scientific papers suggest that it is not the faculty but the interpersonal relationships within the university that provide the greatest source of inspiration³ and that this extends to the family environment, also when choosing a college major.⁴

Old ideas minted for tutors could be a starting point for generating new ideas in chain reaction. Also, talks with collaborators can act as a motivation factor to acquire new ideas, collating them and putting them in a sheet on the desktop or blackboard. In my personal opinion what truly inspires scientists is faith and belief in love, whether material or immaterial or simply in science per se.