2012年7月12日木曜日

2012年7月12日

米国コロンビア大学神経科学研究科の教授(で僕の友人でもある)Stuart Firesteinの“Ignorance: How it drives science”という著書から一節の抜粋:

It (Scientific process) is black cats in dark rooms.  As the Princeton mathematician Andrew Wiles describes it: It’s groping and probing and poking, and some bumbling and bungling, and then a switch is discovered, often by accident, and the light is lit, and everyone says, “Oh, wow, so that’s how it looks,” and then it’s off into the next dark room, looking for the next mysterious black feline.  If this all sounds depressing, perhaps some bleak Beckett-like scenario of existential endlessness, it’s not.  In fact, it’s somehow exhilarating.