How do I know if I’m suited for scientific research?
This is a common question I’ve heard from students. Unfortunately, there is no universal answer.
Nonetheless, I like this speech on “Creative Thinking” by Claude Shannon. On March 20, 1952, he delivered a thought-provoking lecture at the Bell Labs offices as part of an internal series. Although not widely known to the general public, Claude Shannon was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, particularly in science and technology.
If you see yourself reflected in the transcript to some extent, I believe your chances of enjoying and succeeding in scientific research are high. In particular, I have selected the following statements, which remain highly relevant to scientific research today:
“A very small percentage of the population produces the greatest proportion of the important ideas … What are the basic requirements? I think we could set down three things that are fairly necessary for scientific research or for any sort of inventing or mathematics or physics or anything along that line. I don’t think a person can get along without any one of these three.”
“In other words, you have to have some kind of a drive, some kind of a desire to find out the answer, a desire to find out what makes things tick. If you don’t have that, you may have all the training and intelligence in the world, you don’t have questions and you won’t just find answers.”
“I mean a constructive dissatisfaction. The idea could be expressed in the words, “This is OK, but I think things could be done better. I think there is a neater way to do this. I think things could be improved a little.” In other words, there is continually a slight irritation when things don’t look quite right; and I think that dissatisfaction in present days is a key driving force in good scientists.”
“Another approach for a given problem is to try to restate it in just as many different forms as you can. Change the words. Change the viewpoint. Look at it from every possible angle.”
“Next one I might mention is the idea of structural analysis of a problem. Suppose you have your problem here and a solution here. You may have two big a jump to take. What you can try to do is to break down that jump into a large number of small jumps.”