Expertly Crafted Essay On What Kind Of Person Engages In Science?

Science and art have always been considered to be two different worlds that were inhabited with two different types of people. Everyone seems to know what kind of people artists are: they are usually in love with their solitude, unsociable, but often friendly to those who are interested in their art. They love to be distinguished from the crowd and usually wear extraordinary clothes or jewelries. But what kind of people the scientists are? No one seems to discuss their personalities, and everyone knows about their achievements. The two books that I have familiarized myself with during this semester gave me an idea of what kind of people the scientists were, at least in the past. This paper analyzes the traits that are described in the two books and proves that the real personality of a scientist can be different from what we used to imagine. They are people too and they also possess some of the negative traits. However, their scientific achievements cannot be overlooked because of their “bad” personality traits.
The book called “The Starry Messenger” gives an account of Galileo’s life. Galileo is considered to be one of the famous scientists during the time when science just started flourishing. His achievements in mathematics, philosophy and astronomy were not quite valued by his contemporaries, but were later on acknowledged to have a great importance in the world science. “The Starry Messenger” mentions his life in the scientific world as well as his private life, which seems to be very interesting to study. In the book, Galileo is described as a selfish and arrogant person who is able to do anything to achieve what he is going for. He leaves the woman whom he spent decades with and who gave birth to his children for his dream. Of course, this might sound like Galileo was a very dedicated to science person; however, he didn’t treat other people as well as he treated his dream. When he acquired fame all over Europe, he became so arrogant that Italians cursed him. He didn’t seem to care, however: he continued working and earning more and more without paying attention to all of the rumors around him. We used to also praise the scientists for their great achievements and to never think about what kind of people they actually were. In spite of his glamorous life, I doubt that his wife and children remembered him as a caring husband and father; I doubt that the latter remembered him at all.
A similar thing is described in another book about a famous scientist of the past. Robert Hooke’s whole biography was described in the book called “Micrographia.” This man was famous for working with microscope and studying a wide variety of creatures the way they had never been looked at before. However, his personality was not as pleasant as the readers wanted to think: he was described as an arrogant person who was very easy to outrage. Hooke could become furious in a second, especially if someone disagreed with or questioned his ideas on some level. He was very protective of his ideas and stood for them no matter what. This, of course, makes the readers respect him as a scientist, especially if they remember how difficult it was to get one’s ideas noticed back then. But Hooke’s contemporaries had a whole different opinion on him: they claimed that it was impossible to even communicate with the scientist because of his arrogance and an extremely bad temper.
These two books are very similar: they both introduce famous scientists that completely changed people’s understanding of the world. We don’t know how our lives would go if those people never existed. But the books also describe the scientists’ characters that seemed to have a lot of negative traits; those were mainly arrogance, indifference and intemperance. But is it right for us to judge the personalities of the people who improved the world and struggled so much for making their works public several centuries ago? Can we actually claim that all scientists are great investors in their ideas but absolutely terrible people? In my opinion, the characters of these people cannot be explained with the fact that they were scientists. I am sure that such character traits are also possessed by doctors, lawyers and sometimes even teachers. If the question “What kind of people engage in science?” is answered the way these two books answer it, it wouldn’t be a fair answer. The scientists are people just like us, and there are good and bad personas among them. However, according to the books, both scientists were very determined, diligent and always knew what they wanted. They grew up having a dream, and they went for it no matter what happened to them. They chose their dreams over love, which is neither right nor wrong; it is just a choice that no one forced them to make. The world of science is very challenging, and in order to survive and get one’s place in it, one has to be brave enough and to never even consider giving up. Hooke and Galileo were the people who proved that their ideas had high value during maybe the toughest period of time in human history, when everything was controlled by the Church, and scientists were burned to death. Despite the fact that both of them mistreated a lot of people on their way to fame, they can be respected for their persistence and courage that not many of us have even in the modern world.