"David James Polewka" wrote in message
...
http://www.panix.com/~clays/Una/una3.html

THE MOTIVES OF SCIENTISTS
87. Science and technology provide the most important examples of
surrogate activities. Some scientists claim that they are
motivated by "curiosity," that notion is simply absurd. Most scientists
work on highly specialized problems that are not the
object of any normal curiosity. For example, is an astronomer, a
mathematician or an entomologist curious about the
properties of isopropyltrimethylmethane? Of course not. Only a chemist is
curious about such a thing, and he is curious about
it only because chemistry is his surrogate activity. Is the chemist
curious about the appropriate classification of a new
species of beetle? No. That question is of interest only to the
entomologist, and he is interested in it only because
entomology is his surrogate activity. If the chemist and the entomologist
had to exert themselves seriously to obtain the
physical necessities, and if that effort exercised their abilities in an
interesting way but in some nonscientific pursuit,
then they couldn't giver a damn about isopropyltrimethylmethane or the
classification of beetles. Suppose that lack of funds
for postgraduate education had led the chemist to become an insurance
broker instead of a chemist. In that case he would have
been very interested in insurance matters but would have cared nothing
about isopropyltrimethylmethane. In any case it is not
normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time
and effort that scientists put into their work. The
"curiosity" explanation for the scientists' motive just doesn't stand up.

David,

This fellow is a comedian. How interesting that he feels competent to
rule on what is "normal".

FWIW, pretty much everyone I know who has a very narrow scientific focus
has a range of curiousity and excitement about other areas. Hell, even
Gould was a Red Sox fan, and wrote on baseball.

Tom McDonald

snip more-of-the-same ramblings