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The Domain of Life

By "the domain of life" the author means the areas of knowledge dealing with human health and welfare: medical research, healthcare, and related disciplines.

It is a field he feels is relatively new. While we have been interested in health since ancient times, everything up to this point seems rather primitive. Much of the practice, even up to the mid-twentieth century, has been mystical and quite foolish: poking around in wounds, using herbs and remedies in a random manner, and treating physical illness as a spiritual matter. The practices have been completely ineffective in most instances and quite harmful in others (e.g. bleeding and electrocution).

The rapid advances in medicine have also led to a fragmentation of the field. A century ago, Humboldt consolidated everything that was reliably known about healthcare into a four-volume set. Nowadays, it would be impossible for a single person to know everything that has been discovered about medicine, and it would even be difficult for a person to have comprehensive knowledge of a single organ or a single condition.

A Passion for Order

The author begins with a profile of a biologist who has extensively studied ants. It seems a very small thing, but he has published more than 300 papers on the subject, from their classification, biodiversity, behaviors, communication methods, ecosystems, and the like.

What makes this biologist so interesting is that his insights are inspired by bringing together facts and principles that the rest of the field regarded as unrelated and, in some instances, even incompatible.

One particular interest is sociobiology: as highly specialized and social creatures, the behavior of ants sheds light on concepts that are applicable to more complicated creatures with more complex societies - i.e., human beings. This has made his work the subject of much interest, contention, and debate.

A bit of biographical information: there's some indication of a "painful childhood" that cause him to socially withdraw and focus on academic matters. He became interested in entomology by age ten. He was bored in school, largely from being held to the pace of slower learners, and pursued his studies independently, though he began to blossom when given the latitude to engage in independent study in high school.

He regards biology as a field in which "sheer brightness is crucial" and suggest that it is a field in which the scientist's best work is usually done by age 35, at which time he has established his core theories and begins merely to work on the details.

He also speaks of the value of insecurity and ambition as motivational factors: insecurity as a sense that the present understanding of things is incomplete, then ambition as a desire to complete it. A person who is sure of themselves is not likely to be a very good scientist, as he tends to look only for evidence to support what he has already concluded, and thus merely reinforce existing beliefs (even when they are entirely wrong) rather than discover anything new.

There's a brief mention of the struggle of a scientist. To suggest a new theory is to discredit existing theories, and there are many proponents of existing theory that do not take kindly. Innovative work will always be ignored or criticized viciously, so the innovator must be the type who can struggle alone, with all the world against him, to support ideas that pose a threat to the arrogant self-confidence of the entire field.

In terms of the field, researchers presently benefit from a great deal more openness than in previous times. Particularly when medicine was treated as a spiritual matter, anyone who challenged existing beliefs was treated as a heretic and a blasphemer and was vehemently suppressed, sometimes with lethal force. But beginning around the 1960s, the coincidence of a number of breakthrough discoveries have made it far less dangerous to pursue new ideas in the field. People are more tolerant, and even eager to accept new ideas. The books were open to be edited, and still are.

Another significant environmental change is the funding of research. It was, until very recently, impossible to earn a living as a researcher, such that doctors had to spend the majority of their time and effort doing mundane but profitable things - to spend all day lancing boils and stitching wounds, and find some time to conduct research, because you couldn't earn a living just by doing research. In the present day, "research scientist" is a well-paying profession, and has the ability to attract and reward the best minds.

(EN: It strikes me that academia had long been the place where research was conducted. People who taught, and very often never held a real job, were the ones who had the leisure to do research - and research was done in the confines of the highly political and conservative world of the academy, which is resistant to new ideas. So while the general public is often distrustful of "corporate science" it is in fact a much better alternative, and the amount of progress made proves the value.)

Back to more practical matters: the researcher typically is working on several research projects at any given time, seeking connections or commonalities among them. The problem with one-track research is that it becomes insular, and tends to be oblivious to anything that is not contained in the initial research hypothesis.

For much the same reason, he spends a great deal of time reading and attending conferences, as many of the best ideas do not arise on their own, but are the result of a broader awareness: common factors among different initiatives, or an obvious gap in the research that is only filled when a discovery outside the domain suggests a possible solution that no-one in the field has yet considered. In that way, creativity and innovation is a matter of seeking connections of hunting for patterns in seemingly unrelated things.

There is also some need for messiness. Traditionally, science has been too cut-and-dried and too neat. Scientists seek to have a sense of completion, and present very tidy theories that are proven out extensively. The problem is cognitive filtration: they tend to ignore anything that doesn't fit their theory, even things that are very meaningful. Another problem is blindness - being so focused on one idea that one is oblivious to other, more important ideas.

That is not to say that the work of a scientist should be reckless: it is still slow and methodical. But it is not done in a vacuum and it is not done without purpose, and it certainly is not the dogged pursuit of one idea while ignoring anything else. It requires a willingness to accept a new idea that undoes months or years of work, in ultimate pursuit of new knowledge rather than justifying and reinforcing what is already known.

The Life of Cancer Cells

MC profiles a biologist involved in cancer research, a field that has bloomed in recent years due to a few discoveries and a flood of funding - largely because of the discovery that cancer cells are not feign to the body, but are simply normal cells whose growth-inhibiting instructions have gone haywire.

One of the chief challenges he faces is that when a field explodes like this, a researcher must also take on the duties of a business manager, dealing with donors and seeing to the fiscal needs of running an institute, which take time away from doing the scientific research.

This parallels the childhood experience of many creative who were fatherless: it gives them great latitude to be able to pursue their own interests without a guiding hand (that guides them in a different direction to their own desires), but at the same time places them under greater responsibilities in the household.

There's also reference to the typical childhood of a creative: finding school to be oppressive and boring, being a loner, pursuing intellectual interests independently. In this case, the subject participated in a number of "intellectual clubs" of young men with an interest in some academic areas banded together to pursue their studies outside of the academic environment.

Another familiar theme is political strife: during young adulthood, he was a Jew in Nazi Germany, who escaped from the work camps to live in exile abroad. In this sense, academic pursuits became a safe environment and an escape from the chaos of life in general.

He earned his MD and went to work immediately in medical research rather than in treating patients. It's mentioned that he did not choose to specialize in a given field, but dabbled in several, which gave him a broader view and the ability to borrow and experiment with ideas that others assumed to be unrelated.

The Immense Journey

Next, the author mentions Jonas Salk, legendary for having discovered the vaccine for polio. After having done so, he took on greater goals: "the immense journey of evolution from inorganic forms to biological life," which is an immense field that brings together scientists and philosophers.

Unfortunately, his goal was poorly understood and the foundation he created to pursue it soon turned in a different direction, conducting typical biotechnology research while ignoring the larger question. In this sense he found himself dethroned in his own kingdom, retaining a ceremonial status and having an office, but unable to influence the work of the institute that bore his name.

(EN: This falls again into the pattern of the other case studies, pointing out how some of the common factors discussed in earlier chapters were evident in his life.)