Scientists of yesterday were different

Our astronomer and our navigator are away from headquarters at the moment, showing a Professor of Physics how to use his sextant.  This style of instrument was the mainstay of nineteenth-century astronomy: made of brass and glass, with precise scales engraved on them for careful measurements.  The people who used them had to work in a different way from current astronomers and must have had a different approach to life.

The skills required to use a sextant are much the same as those necessary for observational astronomy in the nineteenth century: the ability to make a careful measurement by looking through a telescope, read a tiny engraved scale accurately (no digital display!) and make a long series of calculations by hand without error.  It’s not generally appreciated how much of our understanding of the “wonders of the heavens” was produced in those days from enormous tables of carefully-corrected numbers.  Someone might be inspired to become an astronomer by a love of the night sky, but professionals would also need these observing skills–as well as a heroic toleration of tedium. Nights can get very long alone in an unheated telescope dome. It required a certain kind of personality.

Well, over a century ago photography took over most tasks from the observer’s eye.  Electronically-encoded readouts have taken the place of engraved scales and all the calculations are done by computer, without the astronomer even noticing.  The basic skill required of all astronomers is ability to understand and work with complex computer programs.  Many professional astronomers are still inspired by looking at the night sky, but the science is done by sitting at a computer.  And more and more it is done in large groups, with specific tasks shared out among people who may well live on different continents.  The kind of personality required for astronomy today is quite different from what it was in the century before last.

(We wonder what those with the inclinations of nineteenth-century astronomers do nowadays.  Are they the best of professional accountants during the day, amateur astronomers at night?)

The science of laboratory physics has gone through a similar change, with the tendency toward large groups being even more pronounced.  The various kinds of biology are outside our specialty; we can guess that any kind of laboratory work has changed out of all recognition.  But field biologists must still go out into the wild–has the change in tools (we can think of GPS and infrared night photography) required a change in personality?  We’d be very interested to know.

So sextant work has led us to conclude that scientists differ from each other in two ways: they are excited by different subject matter and their working tools require different personalities.  If you think you might want to be a scientist you should investigate both sides of the profession.  And be careful when you generalize about “the scientific personality.”