Are you a fox or a hedgehog?
This article goes on to discuss Richard Feynman's new book (well, it's really his daughter's compilations of her father's letters), Perfectly Resonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman.
Great scientists come in two varieties, which Isaiah Berlin, quoting the seventh-century-BC poet Archilochus, called foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes know many tricks, hedgehogs only one. Foxes are interested in everything, and move easily from one problem to another. Hedgehogs are interested only in a few problems which they consider fundamental, and stick with the same problems for years or decades. Most of the great discoveries are made by hedgehogs, most of the little discoveries by foxes. Science needs both hedgehogs and foxes for its healthy growth, hedgehogs to dig deep into the nature of things, foxes to explore the complicated details of our marvelous universe. Albert Einstein was a hedgehog; Richard Feynman was a fox.
I think I'm a fox.
Nobel Prize-winning Feynman is considered to be one of the great minds of the 20th century. He worked on the atom bomb, investigated the Challenger disaster, and defined many other groundbreaking ideas. He is a personal favourite of mine, since he didn't seem to take too many things seriously, yet his life and teachings were of the most serious topics.
The development of shock waves in explosions. The design of a neutron counter.... General theory of how to fold paper to make a certain kind of child's toy (called flexagons). The energy levels in the light nuclei. The theory of turbulence (I have spent several years on it without success). Plus all the "grander" problems of quantum theory.
He was also a pretty good artist.
Great book. Buy it.
I just bought the Bill Bryson book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. He went from being one of the funniest and informative travel writers to one of the funniest science teachers. He's definately fits the mindset of a fox.
