Weinberg's "Golden Lessons"

Thoughtful article in Derek Lowe's In the Pipeline blog regarding Science and people starting out in Scientific careers. bq. Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg had a piece back in the Nov. 27 Nature (p. 389) offering advice to people just starting their scientific careers. It's useful stuff, and the lessons aren't just for beginners, either. bq. His first of "Four Golden Lessons" is No one knows everything, and you don't have to. (This came from his early paralysis at not knowing the whole field of physics.) That one gets more true every year, as the pile of scientific knowledge increases. bq. Weinberg's second lesson is aim for rough water. Try to work in a field where things are contentious and unsettled - "go for the messes." There's still room for creativity there, as opposed to the more worked-out fields. bq. His third lesson is forgive yourself for wasting time. He classifies that as "probably the hardest to take" of his lessons. This is a consequence of the go-for-the-messes advice, and will be most applicable to those that have followed it. What he means is that it can be very hard to know if you're working on something that's even solvable, or if you're working on the right problem at all. bq. Weinberg's final lesson is learn something about the history of science. The least important reason to do that, he says, is that it might help out your research. To use his example, without knowing the historical record, you might come to believe that Thomas Kuhn or Karl Popper really understood how science works. But the larger reason is that an appreciation for history puts your work in perspective. Weinberg believes, as I do, that science is one of the highest activities of civilization, and that we should be proud of our parts in it. A real discovery can live longer, and with greater impact, than almost any other human work. Wonderful words and not just applicable to Science...