I am still reading through G. H. Hardy’s “A Mathematician’s Apology”; it is a very interesting essay, but it is fairly long after riding seven miles a night on the bike, I have not felt much like reading. However, Hardy has some ideas about the motives behind research that I found interesting:
There are many highly respected motives which may lead men to prosecute research, but three which are much more important than the rest. The first (without which the rest must come to nothing) is intellectual curiosity, desire to know the truth. Then, professional pride, anxiety to be satisfied with one’s performance, the shame that overcomes any self-respecting craftsman when his work is unworthy of his talent. Finally, ambition, desire for reputation, and the position, even the power or the money, which it brings. It may be fine to feel, when you have done your work, that you have added to the happiness or alleviated the sufferings of others, but that will not be why you did it. So if a mathematician, or a chemist, or even a physiologist, were to tell me that the driving force in his work had been the desired to benefit humanity, then I should not believe him (nor should I think the better of him if I did). His dominant motives have been those which I have stated, and in which, surely, there is nothing of which any decent man need be ashamed.
It is important to note that Hardy attributes these motives to be the driving reasons why people perform research; obviously, there are other professions, such as teaching or social work as a few examples, that may have alternate, altruistic motives.
Reflecting these motives back on myself, I find that they fit fairly well in that order. First and foremost, I want to know the answer to the question that I am pursuing. As an aside, I find myself asking questions during the most random times and wanting to know the answer. The other night while giving Em a bath, I couldn’t remember what eigenvalues and eigenvectors were, so I had to fetch my Linear Algebra text and look it up while Em was entertained with bath crayons. There was no particular reason why this flitted through my head, but it did and I had to know the answer. What can I say, I am a little weird. Secondly, when I am writing software, I want my programs to work correctly when other people get their hands on them. Finally, I want to be thought of well in whatever I am doing. Luckily, the first two motives usually help to drive this third one along.
I especially like Hardy’s statement that “there is nothing of which any decent man need be ashamed”. Yes, doing things for the greater good is noble, but if you do not get joy and satisfaction from what you do, you will become burned out and no longer want to do it. Maybe you get joy and satisfaction merely knowing that you are helping others; for me, there also has to be the hint that I am going to learn something new.
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