The Mighty Technician
Scientists don’t repeat themselves. Once they solve a problem, they move on to a new one. Why would a brilliant individual bother with things that have already been solved, things that are well understood? Where’s the percentage in that?
Buford Lister, personal communication.
I found an article about a young woman who got her Ph.D. in physics. She specialized in turbulence and wrote her dissertation on that topic. She loved F1 racing and always wanted to work for one of the teams. She applied for and got a job with one of the major manufacturers. She wrote about how quickly her excitement turned to disappointment as she realized her job could be done by a highly trained chimp. She was using a fraction of a percent of her brain; that was all her employer wanted from her. Unfortunately, her plight is a common one.
This essay concerns scientists like our newly minted Ph.D., engineers, and technicians. The jobs are different, even though the technician more closely aligns with the engineer than the engineer does with the scientist. It is tragic when one person trained in one category finds themselves in another. Such a situation can lead to crises, and it often does.
Do you know any scientists, honest researchers, people who are driven to understand the as-of-yet unknowable? They tend to be the most interesting people. They only sleep because they have to, and they never have to force themselves to work. When a person is driven that hard, when they feel the curiosity in their bones, there is no such thing as work. It is all exploration. Once a problem is solved, there might be a few drinks, but then it is on to the next issue. Life is short, and there are lots of things to discover.
Engineers are cut from a different cloth. Do you know any engineers? They spend all of their time resolving problems that have solutions. Sure, there might be the occasional project that allows them to stretch their intellect, but for the most part, they apply the proper equations and let the math do the work. The job does not require flashes of insight unique to human intellectual history. Not to say that there aren’t a lot of clever engineers out there; there certainly are. It is just that they are wired in such a way that it is acceptable to live on autopilot after they have mastered the area of their specialty.
What about technicians? We all know lots of those. They might work at a repair shop or wire cable for your local internet utility. The repetition here is apparent. They fix things, and they solve straightforward problems. They are not worried about design or epistemological issues relating to the ultimate nature of their work. In this scheme, the problems they solve are simple, and the tasks are straightforward. Nothing to see here, at least from the perspective of a working scientist.
I am writing this essay to tell most of you reading about a tragedy. This silent epidemic afflicts a quiet group of people who routinely suffer. You may know some of them, but you probably don’t. If you do know them, I doubt you know what they are struggling with. As a group, there is power in resolute silence.
Do you remember the story of Albert Einstein working at a patent office? Imagine if he never published his ideas and spent his life stamping papers. How about the Einstein-level geniuses living average lives in Africa or China. I am sure such people are out there; there is simply no way to find them or an outlet for them. They suffer silently, unidentified and unappreciated, their intelligence more of a detriment than a blessing.
The big secret is that many college graduates, especially those with advanced degrees, spend their time doing the work of a technician. That is the way of the world. They are hired, and their employer expects them to do a couple of things well and maybe one thing really well. That’s it. The young woman I started the essay with left her dream job because she was not being challenged. She was bored, very bored. And there it is, one of the big revelations I have had about life – Scientists suffer when required to spend their lives doing the work of a technician. It is tragic, the worst possible thing for a curious, highly trained individual to do repetitive daily tasks until they fade away. There are lots of people like that out there. It is not ennui; it is something more fundamental.
It is as difficult for those with the mentality of a scientist to work on engineering problems their entire lives. Engineering math is well known, and its application has been proven effective again and again and again… Flashes of insight are not required, expected, or welcome. Here is another problem with a simple solution, have fun solving it. And trust me, those problems are soul-crushing for the people born with the curiosity and drive of a scientist. What if Wonder Woman was tasked with ticketing jaywalkers every day for the rest of her life? She would find that unsatisfying, as would the rest of us.
Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist (among other things), once wrote that the job of an elementary school teacher is the most critical job society has to offer. Suppose he was correct, and he might be. In that case, we should round up all the troubled scientists working as technicians and pay them large sums of money to get them in the classroom with impressionable youngsters. Their curiosity and innate sense of wonder are the needed cure. Of course, I am talking about the scientists, not the kids.
Imagine if all youngsters could interact with brilliant people curious about the world and its workings. We would all be better off. The sense of wonder in the children would mix nicely with their teachers’ more mature understanding of the intricacies of possibility. If I were in charge, I would work on a plan to implement this as soon as possible.
I nearly forgot that I live in a place that does not value education. All it does is indoctrinate the students into a liberal agenda, right? How many times have I heard that? I can only speak to my area of Hillbilly Land, where education is viewed with suspicion. Most people I know think universities should be job training centers, like some sort of hyped-up vocational school. A degree in philosophy? What are you going to do with that? Anthropology? That is even worse. At least you can get a job if you learn a trade. What are you thinking?
If I were to propose that PhDs take over as grade school teachers, the reaction would be swift and awkward. At least here in Hillbilly Land. Why pay more money for something as useless as a teacher for a child? The reaction would be different if you lived on a coast. There is a different mentality toward lots of topics. For instance, are the people at Harvard distinct from those here in Hillbilly Land? Absolutely. In my experience, the only thing everyone has in common is DNA. Everything else finds its place on other ends of the scale.
Am I proposing that all the children be taught by technicians? I want them to be educated by the people who, through circumstance, find themselves working as technicians. My guess is they would benefit as much as the kids. Perhaps seeing the world through those young, impressionable eyes might rekindle a light dimmed by the daily grind of an uneventful, unchallenging, and uninteresting life.
I am not delusional; I know the odds of something like this happening are hovering around zero percent. School teachers are not valued, not even a little. Raising the status of the profession requires one thing, money. As a society, we determined long ago that we would prefer to channel resources in other directions. Children, especially those born to poor parents, aren’t even an afterthought. The same with scientists working as technicians. One day there might exist a society that values both. It won’t be in my lifetime, and the odds are long that it will appear in the near future. As always, hope springs.
