Problem-Solvers vs Specialists

(This follows on from the post about an analyst's view of programming.)

I was reading an interesting but often irritating little book called Science: A Four Thousand Year History by Patricia Fara. It reminds me of Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's Millenium and the attempts of other historians to play up the role and significance of non-Western cultures, which is fairly difficult as the development of both Islamic and Chinese cultures were effectively shut down by their politicians way before they had the chance to carry on for long enough to see if they could come up with mathematical physics. But that's another story.

Here are some quotes from her view of Crick and Watson: "...[Rosamund] Franklin...[was] taking enough time as she went along to master fully all the necessary techniques...In contrast, Watson described how he lurched from one faulty hypothesis to the next, homing on on the double helix through flashes of intuition and snippets of information borrowed from specialists... Watson and Crick...garnered only the pieces of information they required to help them juggle their cut-out shapes into a structure compatible with all the data...after many blind alleys and lucky flukes, they eventually hit on a version that made sense..."

I read that passage and thought but that's what I do. That's what anyone who wants to solve a problem does. Solving big problems usually needs techniques and ideas from many different disciplines, but not all of the ideas and techniques. I need the techniques and results I need to solve the problem, and no more. Crick and Watson were problem-solvers, not specialists, and grabbing around for a decent way in to solving the problem is what problem-solvers do.

Fara says this like it's a bad thing. Like an honest, respectable scientist masters their specialism for its own sake and if they solve a big problem, does so as a consequence of their devotion to their specialism, not as an aim in itself. I used to think that when I was in my teens and twenties, that I had to know everything about "the fundamentals" before I could move on to the advanced stuff. As if you have to be able to play the Goldberg Variations and Chopin's Nocturnes before you can play Blue Monk. You don't. I wish someone had told me that earlier.

In academia, they are paid to research in their subject and teach. Though you might think otherwise, academics are not paid to solve Big Problems, like how hereditary works. Academia is a hierarchical institution (this is why female academics are hung up on "hierarchy") and taking on a big problem is like making a bid to be the alpha dog. Nice, well-behaved researchers don't take on big problems.

In business, we're paid to solve to problems, not develop skills and knowledge for the sake of it. (Taken too far, this can be counter-productive for the company: the more skills you have, the more likely you are to solve tougher problems. You need to know what skills you want to learn and look out for problems that will let you practice them.) The ambition and competitive nature of the problem-solver does better in business and the military.

Neither is "better" than the other. Both need each other. Problem-solvers need the specialists to devise the techniques and come up with that, until now unappreciated, crucial but obscure fact. Specialists need the problem-solvers to give their work significance and direction.