Hi Kim, Thanks for the interesting thoughts about why geoscientists may have more sustained career trajectories compared with scientists in other fields. Here are a few follow-on ideas about why this may be so.
1. The first disticntion follows the work of Robert Frodeman who depicts geoscience as an historical and interpretative science(Frodeman R., 1995, Geological reasoning: geology as an interpretive and historical science: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 107, no. 8, p. 960-968)compared with other more experimental sciences that work in relatively closed systems. It simply takes a long career to encounter the natural variation found in Nature, and then to be able to place natural phenomena into some sort of organized framework.
2. This requires an essential professional skill: pattern recognition, as embodied by the work of Marie Tharp.
3. A related skill is "disembedding"--knowing what to look for and what to exclude in looking at complex natural settings. Looking at the same landscape, I focus on the textures and mineralogy of outcrops to discern petrologic process and history (and I ignore the "overburden"), whereas my geomorphologist colleague looks at the landforms that overlie the bedrock to discern landscape evolution. Knowing what to look for and why is an acquired skill, that is dictated by the question at hand.
4. Correlation and comparison: being able to recall similar phenomena from disparate localities, and using the base knowledge from other settings to interpret observations from a new location is intrinsic to geoscience investigations.
5. This also requires the ability to make inferences from incomplete data and engage analagous reasoning, as described in the early writings of G.K. Gilbert and T. Chamberlain. The ability to work with ambiguity, as described in Ault's excellent contributions also plays a significant role--one that requires maturity of thought and experience to be able to discern what is possible, permitted, plausible, or impossible (or at least inconsistent with extant knowledge or theory).
6. I wonder if the experience acquired over a lifetime might otherwise be characterized as "intuition"--a feeling for what must have happened to produce a particular natural phenomena (as per Read's famous quote). A treatise on the importance of intuition in scientific investigations can be found in the biography of Barbara McClintock (winner of the Nobel Prize for her contributions in describing the role of "jumping genes" based on her studies of maize genetics; see the biography by Evelyn Fox Keller, 1984, A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock). Is intution simply an expression of acquired knowledge and wisdom acquired over a lifetime of work?
Finally, if these are professional skills that are valued and can only be acquired through professional development during the course of a career, perhaps we should be looking for ways to embed these skills into our coursework so that students can begin to practice them early and often.
1. The first disticntion follows the work of Robert Frodeman who depicts geoscience as an historical and interpretative science(Frodeman R., 1995, Geological reasoning: geology as an interpretive and historical science: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 107, no. 8, p. 960-968)compared with other more experimental sciences that work in relatively closed systems. It simply takes a long career to encounter the natural variation found in Nature, and then to be able to place natural phenomena into some sort of organized framework.
2. This requires an essential professional skill: pattern recognition, as embodied by the work of Marie Tharp.
3. A related skill is "disembedding"--knowing what to look for and what to exclude in looking at complex natural settings. Looking at the same landscape, I focus on the textures and mineralogy of outcrops to discern petrologic process and history (and I ignore the "overburden"), whereas my geomorphologist colleague looks at the landforms that overlie the bedrock to discern landscape evolution. Knowing what to look for and why is an acquired skill, that is dictated by the question at hand.
4. Correlation and comparison: being able to recall similar phenomena from disparate localities, and using the base knowledge from other settings to interpret observations from a new location is intrinsic to geoscience investigations.
5. This also requires the ability to make inferences from incomplete data and engage analagous reasoning, as described in the early writings of G.K. Gilbert and T. Chamberlain. The ability to work with ambiguity, as described in Ault's excellent contributions also plays a significant role--one that requires maturity of thought and experience to be able to discern what is possible, permitted, plausible, or impossible (or at least inconsistent with extant knowledge or theory).
6. I wonder if the experience acquired over a lifetime might otherwise be characterized as "intuition"--a feeling for what must have happened to produce a particular natural phenomena (as per Read's famous quote). A treatise on the importance of intuition in scientific investigations can be found in the biography of Barbara McClintock (winner of the Nobel Prize for her contributions in describing the role of "jumping genes" based on her studies of maize genetics; see the biography by Evelyn Fox Keller, 1984, A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock). Is intution simply an expression of acquired knowledge and wisdom acquired over a lifetime of work?
Finally, if these are professional skills that are valued and can only be acquired through professional development during the course of a career, perhaps we should be looking for ways to embed these skills into our coursework so that students can begin to practice them early and often.
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