Charles Reiss (h/t) recently recommended me a short book by Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934), an important Spanish neuroscientist and physician. Cajal first published the evocatively titled Reglas y Consejos sobre Investigación Cientifica: Los tónicos de la voluntad in 1897 and it was subsequently revised and translated various times since then. By far the most entertaining portion for me is chapter 5, entitled “Diseases of the Will”. Despite the name, what Cajal actually presents is a taxonomy of scientists who do contribute little to scientific inquiry: “contemplators”, “bibliophiles and polyglots”, “megalomaniacs”, “instrument addicts”, “misfits”, and “theorists”. I include a PDF of this brief chapter, translated into English, here for interested readers, under my belief it is in the public domain.
“I am in this picture and I don’t like it.”
Which are you?
In some ways, it’s more like “I wish I was”, or “at some point I was”. Something on the contemplator-megalomaniac axis. And aren’t we all misfits? Or is it just my impostor syndrome talking.