The Difference Between An Amateur, A Scientist, And A Genius
Around 1800, Herschel wanted to look at the Sun with his telescope, so to keep from going completely blind used different color filters to darken the image enough to be able to look at it.
What appeared remarkable was that when I used some of [the color filters], I felt a sensation of heat, though I had but little light; while others gave me much light, with scarce any sensation of heat.
Almost anyone could have made this observation. The point is what do you do next.
An amateur might think about this for a while, might even come up with a hypothesis involving an inverse relationship between "brightness" or "color" and "heat."
An amateur, if he is sufficiently motivated, might even be tempted to investigate this, which is what Herschel did.
Herschel refracted light through a glass prism.
And measured, with a thermometer, the temperature of each color.
Conducting the experiment this way would be sufficient for an amateur; he might even be pleased with himself for taking it this far. But Herschel wasn't an amateur, he was a scientist. If you're going to do it, do it right: he knew he needed a control. An amateur is satisfied with relative comparisons, "active comparators", "this color hotter is than this one." But Herschel wasn't going to fall for those shortcuts to hell. He placed another thermometer, outside of the spectrum, as a formal control. Actually, that's my mistake: he put two thermometers outside of the spectrum, as controls.
He found that each color had a different temperature, the red being the hottest, violet the coolest.
Take a moment and consider to what extent you knew (or did not know) this, today, with these principles firmly established in our everyday life. Think about what this finding would mean to Herschel. What kind of questions would he ask next?
Because Herschel wasn't an ordinary scientist. He was able to ask questions others would not think to ask. He looked at those colors, the ones that he had measured, and he asked, what is the temperature of the region after the colors?
He wasn't satisfied with what would have been an otherwise worthwhile experiment, nor was he constrained by what he could see and observe.
So? What do you think was the temperature of this region?
He found it to be even hotter than the red.
It's 2009, so you can guess that what he discovered was the infrared region. But you're putting that together already knowing about infrared light. He had to come up with a whole new explanation for why something that wasn't there was hotter than everything else.
An amateur is full of wonder and speculation, tinkering towards the truth but suffering from a lack of knowledge and idleness; he's not even sure if someone else has already made these discoveries. "Is this a worthwhile pursuit?"
A scientist performs experiments to confirm or disprove a hypothesis, and in that way he grinds out the truth.
A genius has three abilities, which are actually the union of amateur and scientist: 1. to know the state of the art, what is known and what is not known. 2. To be able to think "out of the box". 3. To be disciplined enough to concentrate on the tedium of a formal investigation of his wondrous speculations.
1. To know the state of the art. That's not genetic. You have to devote time to the reading and the learning. This is the second biggest problem with the speculation of amateurs, who may come up with a brilliant idea but suffer from self-doubt: "well, somebody must have already thought of this." Its corollary is accepting that what everyone knows is true, because better minds than yours have checked.
Herschel discovered Uranus, which had probably been observed by a billion people over 6 millennia. But he knew that everyone "knew" it was a star, so was able to ask a now obvious question: if it's a star, how come it gets visibly bigger when you magnify it, unlike all the other stars? Hello?
2. To be able to think "out of the box." This may be genetic, but I doubt it. More often it is the result of using one mode of thinking and training from an unrelated discipline. Not to call myself a genius, but if I was a grade focused pre-med, then med school, then residency guy, this blog and its ideas wouldn't exist. Herschel wasn't a mathematician or an astronomer; he was a professional musician. Not amateur musician- professional, as in that's how he earned his living. Raised by a professional oboist father, played oboe, cello and organ, composed 20+ symphonies, director of the Bath orchestra, etc. And then decided to discover Uranus. Sweet.
NB: age is also likely irrelevant. He discovered Uranus at 43. The infrared experiment was at 62. But most scientists, doing the same kind of thinking, year after year, are much more likely to get an endowed chair than make a novel discovery. (Interesting experiment: what if all Chairmen at Universities had to rotate disciplines for six months every five years? Can't be worse than what goes on today.)
3. Discipline and work. This would be the biggest problem with amateurs. Scientists have it in gigantic proportions, but often to the exclusion of free thinking and speculation.
Sure, it took Herschel half a second to ask, "what about the temperature in the dark zone?" but it misses how much work he put into his "amateur" investigations.
The old sayings "success is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" or "90% of anything is just showing up" really speak not to the necessity of work, but to the point that most ideas are mediocre and it doesn't matter. Diligent application can make almost anything a success.
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May 26, 2009 5:49 PM | Posted by : | Reply
This is also the best definition of an artist that I've ever read:
1. to know the state of the art, what is known and what is not known. 2. To be able to think "out of the box". 3. To be disciplined enough to concentrate on the tedium of a formal investigation of his wondrous speculations."
May 26, 2009 6:23 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"He found that each color had a different temperature, the red being the hottest, violet the coolest."
I think the opposite is true. Violet is hotter than red.
May 26, 2009 6:26 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I'm on a pre-med track right now, and nothing ticks me off more than when I hear kids bitch about general chem, orgo or physics and then tell me they want to be doctors. Here's the best one "You'll never use any of that stuff when you're a doctor anyway"--I think that's a load of shit, but they do have a point.
Regardless, I think the purpose of taking these extremely difficult courses is not because you use physics on the operating table but because learning such courses can teach you how to think OUTSIDE of the box. They also (if you do well) teach you discipline and hard work.
As Alone argues, maybe there is a genetic component to thinking outside of the box and there is an aspect that can be learned. I think that courses teach you the part that can be learned. However, the genetic aspect comes from a combination of having a pair of balls (the confidence to pursue your ideas) and being a bit crazy.
There are medics that know how to do a tracheotomy but knowledge doesn't give you the balls or the lunacy to shove the 14-gauge in.
May 27, 2009 12:18 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Alone, if you have the balls practice psychiatry like you write the blog, you're a genius. If you practice psychiatry like everyone else and use the blog as sole annonymous outlet for your brilliant ideas, you are an asshole.
May 28, 2009 3:04 AM | Posted by : | Reply
The last paragraph seems to be a non sequitor. Diligent application alone, as a recipe for genius, does not seem to be the point of the post.
The rest is really good. Not new, but well-presented. However, I would argue that whereas in some fields (e.g., physics), the most creative works seems to be near the beginning of the career (when so much is new to the scientist), in more integrative endeavors in which one bridges fields, the most creative work comes later. Then again, perhaps I have just supported your point regarding switching areas of study every few years. (There is a downside to completely changing fields, however.)
But it shouldn't be reserved for chairs of departments. Maybe it's time for everyone to do something completely different on sabbatical.
May 29, 2009 9:07 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Fantastic post, but the huge scientology ad kind of spoiled it for me.
May 29, 2009 10:33 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Especially nowadays, it's hard to imagine that whatever ideas you might come up with haven't been conceived and vetted before. Every discipline comprises an enormous corpus of knowledge and theory, generated by people who have spent a lot more time and effort on the topic than an amateur ever could. The less naive one is about this fact, the more likely they'll dismiss their ideas as unoriginal. If a search party of 800 people fail to find a lost hiker in their sweep of the woods, why would I think I can?
It makes me think of all the sham "detox" treatments and diets pushed on the Internet. Why are people so credulous as to believe that decades of doctors and researchers have somehow overlooked the medical importance of a colon cleanse to good health?
May 29, 2009 10:39 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Think outside the box - awsm!
Feel free to submit posts like this to Blasphemes.blogspot.com, I think our readers would love to read posts like this!
May 30, 2009 11:53 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Yawn, yet another hagiography of genius. If it weren't for the labors of "ordinary" scientists, there would be no box to think outside of.
May 31, 2009 12:17 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I feel you discredit the words "amateur" and "scientist" in this post. Both are worthy things to be. I rate them higher that the word "genius" as to be a genius you merely need a high I.Q. while an amateur or scientist implies mastery of a field.
May 31, 2009 12:37 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Re: Anonymous, May 31, 2009 12:17 AM
The source and the meaning of genius depend on who you ask. Sure, the usual definition of genius is based on IQ, but the IQ test is only just barely over 100 years old. The word was around before then, and different people have taken a crack or two at what gives some people that "spark."
My personal favorite is Mozart, who said the source of genius is love. So the meaning of genius is getting results that others can't, by pursuing it in a way that others won't, thanks to a depth of feeling that others don't have.
Alone is using a definition based on a behavior and not a measurement, so it's more like that.
June 1, 2009 2:55 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Actually not, Hannah.
For an explanation, see this: http://home.znet.com/schester/calculations/herschel/index.html
June 1, 2009 6:24 PM | Posted by : | Reply
A physicist,
I don't understand your link, it was too technical for me. It's taught everywhere and I learned in different classes that blue burns hotter than red. We even did an experiment on it in chemistry class where we used something or other to find the hottest part of the flame and it's blue. That part is undisputed. I don't know what mistakes were in the original paper.
June 1, 2009 11:25 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Hannah, you are absolutely right that anything *glowing* blue hot is hotter than anything glowing red hot and I had that thought also when I read the original post. But, in Herschel's experiment all the light is from a single object glowing yellow hot (the sun)! This bit of knowledge only predisposes one to expect something that turns out to be different from what is observed experimentally.
What Herschel (the scientist) did was to not let his preconceptions get in the way of making careful observations and then letting those observations hold more weight in his mind than any preconceptions.
What Herschel (the genius) did was to reason accurately enough from his observations (even though he understand everything!) to discover something that was previously completely unknown--infrared light.
What it says in the "too technical" (yes, it is) link is that Herschel's observation that the red end is hotter than the blue end (and that the infrared part is hotter than either) is actually only an artifact of the way he did the experiment---and that if one does things a little differently one can get a different result entirely.
Since it would have been easier to ignore a little bit of heat off the red end of the spectrum than it was to ignore a lot, it was lucky for Herschel that he did things the way he did. Part of genius, it seems, is taking advantage of such serendipity.
June 1, 2009 11:31 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Oops,
"(even though he understand everything!)"
in the above post should be
"(even though he didn't understand everything!)"
June 2, 2009 4:47 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Excellent post. The only thing I would add would be in the genius section. I believe it is important to do two things: 1.keep a record of the process/endeavor. I find that despite multiple systems and numerous devices- that handwritten notes work best. The second point is 'to know when a particular task or process is completed'. Or, to put it another way know when to set the thing down down and stop messing with it. The last thing I would like to add and emphasize, is to accept the fact that your discovery/solution/answer may not have immediate application or context. Which is ok, because you kept a record of this (and bonus points are given for keeping your archives organized in some kind of hierarchy/nomenclature) so, when the time comes you'll be able to say"whoa...wait a sec..", and feel even better about the whole thing because you shared your experience with others.
June 3, 2009 12:29 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I don't believe genius is genetic; I believe it is developed by having a desire to find the truth and questioning everything we are taught. Those who accept what is commonly believed without testing - even when what they observe obviously contradicts what they've been taught - never develop their own genius.
There is a measurable connection between music and genius although I cannot say whether geniuses are drawn to music or music develops genius or both. Years ago I came across research that indicated more Music majors are accepted to Engineering programs than Engineering majors.
Ask any group of computer techs or programmers and at least a third of them will be musicians. I once studied Thoroughbred pedigrees and over a third of serious students were musicians or working in a computer related field. Many wrote their own programs before quality programs were made available.
Genius requires being able to see the big picture, then hone in on a specialty and stay focused long enough to get results.
June 29, 2009 11:50 PM | Posted by : | Reply
WoW!!! I guess this was really educational hehe...
Well, i mean i know Herschel but not that well and to be honest im not really fond of reading articles or blogs but this one captures my attention. Tnx by the way and God Bless...
-rOeL-
Philippines
June 30, 2009 10:21 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Blinded by the light. Wait a minute, heat and temperature are thermodynamic phenomena and light, a quantum mechanical phenomenon.
Light of a certain frequency may be absorbed by molecules causing them to change the frequency and amplitude of their oscillations and thereby elevate the temperature of a mass. But light itself has no intrinsic temperature. Expose the same mass to light of higher or lower frequency and it does not heat up because of the quantum effect.
Think of a microwave oven. The oven emits a certain electro-magnetic frequency which heats up water in a plastic container. The water is heated directly by the microwaves, not the container. Herschel's arm got warm under IR because he was made of water. If he were made of plastic, he would have gotten warm from some other frequency.
And the explanatory web reference above confuses the quantum effect with photon flux density. I.e., the frequency has to be right and you need enough photons to heat up the mass faster than thermal transfer cools it back down.
- A Dilettante Chemist
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