 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
The man who is engaged in experiments with a view to some great scientific discovery or invention is not blamed afterwards for the poverty that he has made his family endure, provided that his efforts are crowned with ultimate success. If, however, he never succeeds in making the discovery or the invention that he was attempting, public opinion condemns him as a crank, which seems unfair, since no one in such an enterprise can be sure of success in advance.
Source: Bertrand Russell: he Conquest of Happiness, chap. 8: Zest
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In the "race for a limited pie," only a few people achieve great success through hard work. The majority of people who work hard are not rewarded, or achieve only modest results. However, the world pretends to have the illusion that if you work hard, you will succeed. If we look for the competition in ourselves (and not in the outside world), we may say that we are "successful" if we work hard and grow, but only a few people are satisfied with that.
The world of science is not a "competition for a limited pie"; anyone can succeed if they discover something new. However, the reality is that there are far more people who fail to make discoveries and never see the light of day than there are people who make scientific discoveries. Because there are more ordinary people than scientists, society is harsh on those who sacrifice their families to focus on scientific discovery. However, if you put yourself in the shoes of a scientist, you would not have such an unfair evaluation. After all, it seems to be true that "people are lenient toward themselves and harsh toward others.
Many people who were not evaluated during their lives but were evaluated after their deaths are artists, and not so many scientists. To name just one, there is Alan Turing, who is called the father of computer science. During World War II, a British cryptanalysis team, with Turing's help, succeeded in deciphering Nazi Germany's coded communications, helping the Allies to victory. However, Turing himself lived an unhappy life. I have also seen a movie about Alan Turing's life (The Imitation Game: Enigma and the Secret of the Mathematical Genius) on Amazon Prime Video. If you are interested, please refer to Wikepedia's description.
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