Most scientific or engineering discoveries would never become successful products without contributions from other scientists or engineers. Every major invention is the child of far-flung parents who may never meet.
Interpretation
Collaboration and shared knowledge are crucial for the success of scientific and engineering advancements.
This quote emphasizes the importance of collaboration in the fields of science and engineering. It highlights that major inventions are often the result of a collective effort, drawing upon the ideas and contributions of many individuals, even if they do not know each other personally. This interconnectedness fosters innovation and leads to successful products that may not be possible in isolation.
In practice
In a presentation about teamwork in scientific research, this quote could illustrate the necessity of collaboration.
I've read about 80 books a year for the past 50 years. I come from cultural breeding. I don't have a cellphone. When you spend all your time checking your cellphone messages, or updating your Facebook (of course I don't have a Facebook page) then you don't have any time for reading.
Most innovation is not done by research institutes and national laboratories. It comes from manufacturing - from companies that want to extend their product reach, improve their costs, increase their returns. What's very important is in-house research.
America tends to assume Silicon Valley-style innovators can drive quick and transformative changes, but even Silicon Valley's would-be masters of the universe have discovered that energy transitions are subject to time spans and technical constraints that defy their reach.
Everyone [in higher education] was what I call drillers of deeper wells. These academics sit at the bottom of a deep well and they look up and see a sliver of the sky. They know everything about that little sliver of sky and nothing else. I scan all my horizons.
I'm old fashioned. I'm not one of these young guys who think they are so smart that they can prescribe what humanity ought to do. Humanity never learns any lessons. Prescriptions don't matter. We already know exactly what to do. We just don't do it.
Economic and technical imperatives - not any preconceived directives - will keep propelling the process of energy transition.
At long last, we may be returning to the original two-sided sense of the word virus, which originally signified either a life-giving substance or a deadly venom. Viruses are indeed exquisitely deadly, but they have provided the world with some of its most important innovations. Creation and destruction join together once more.
All of a sudden, space isn't friendly. All of a sudden, it's a place where people can die. . . . Many more people are going to die. But we can't explore space if the requirement is that there be no casualties; we can't do anything if the requirement is that there be no casualties.
The science of systematics has long been affected by profound philosophical preconceptions, which have been all the more influential for being usually covert, even subconscious.
Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing difficulties.
I fell in love with the elegance and precision of genetic analysis and experimentation to answer profound biological questions.
The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find out how these laws operate. It is the scientist's job to find the ways in which these laws can serve the human will. However, it is not the scientist's job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, whether it should be used, or how it should be used. This responsibility rests with the American people and with their chosen representatives.
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