You might have seen him flash by on his homemade recumbent bike. Professor of Aquatic Ecology Marten Scheffer loves cycling. It frees the spirit – for new thoughts, ideas and insights. For that possible eureka moment in the life of a scientist. ‘Everyone knows that the Aha moment doesn’t happen when you are seated at your desk. It happens as you are cycling home, having a shower or doing something else. It is good to create space for it.’
‘Science is always associated with reason. Reason is science’s strong suit. But you hardly ever get a new idea through rational thought; it always works through intuition and gut feeling,’ adds Scheffer. ‘All famous scientists know this, make use of it and cultivate it in one way or another. One famous example is Darwin’s walks. But strangely enough we never talk about this.’ Scheffer calls it the hidden half of scientific thinking. The half that is hardly ever mentioned in science classes. Which is wrong, in his view. ‘Surely you want to open students’ eyes to the full range of ways of thinking and searching for questions about how the world works?’
So make space for dual thinking, argues Scheffer in an article published last week in Ecology and Society. Intuition and creativity are at least as important to a scientist as thinking and reasoning. One of the sources Scheffer bases his argument on is Thinking Fast and Slow, by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. Fast and slow refer here to the two ways our brains work, according to Kahneman. Slow, conscious and effortful reasoning as opposed to fast, unconscious and effortless associative thinking. ‘One of the extraordinary features of the two thought systems is that they cannot both function at the same time,’ adds Scheffer. ‘Reasoning suppresses intuition. But you need them both. You must of course use reasoning to check out new ideas and see whether they make sense.’
IS YOUR IDEA ‘JUST THE TICKET’?
Marten Scheffer is both a scientist and an artist. He will be performing as a musician this month in guitarist Harry Sacksioni’s jubilee tour. Scheffer plays the mandolin, the violin, the guitar and percussion. A ‘home match’ is scheduled for Thursday 2 April in the Junushof. Resource has a free ticket going. At Scheffer’s request, the ticket will go to the person with the best idea for training students in creative and original thinking. Email your idea to roelof.kleis@wur.nl
But how do you do this dual thinking? How do you create space for intuition and facilitate your own eureka moment? Relaxation is important, thinks Scheffer. ‘To some extent the best science comes out of some kind of lazing around. When I run a workshop I try to leave half of the time unstructured. So you go for a bike ride or a walk together. That may seem like a waste of taxpayers’ money, but in the end you are often much more productive that way.’ A second key ingredient is constantly making new contacts. Associative thinking is nice, but you do have to have elements to associate, says Scheffer. And preferably, elements that come from beyond the familiar circles. ‘If you look too close to home, you won’t often find anything very surprising. The big surprise comes precisely from linking your study with something completely different. Read things you wouldn’t normally read. Talk to people you wouldn’t normally talk to.’
Impulse, the meeting place on the campus, was created on Scheffer’s recommendation. Oh sure, it is all very beautiful, he says. But Impulse was not what he had in mind. It is all far too tidy and organized. ‘My ideas were much wilder. I think the best contacts are random ones which come about through relaxed get-togethers. My proposal was for a kind of sympo sium along the lines of the ancient Greeks. A pub, basically: a place to get a good meal and a drink. An accessible, informal place in the middle of the campus. With hammocks and crates to sit on. Where you are allowed to write on the tables and windows, where there is always something going on at lunchtime: speed-talks, films, short theatrical shows. A place where everyone wants to be because there’s always something happening. And during working hours, because meeting people is our work. Impulse doesn’t have that edge, or the informality I had in mind. There is a place for something wilder than Impulse, something more anarchistic.’
And while he is at it, Scheffer has a go at the whole structure of the university. ‘It might be a good idea to scrap the whole system of chair groups. Or at least of chair holders. I think chair groups are little kingdoms that are too inward-looking. There are so many fantastic opportunities for cross-fertilization in Wageningen. Actually, any kind of structure you think up for that, whether a science group or a chair group, is a limitation. A looser structure, so that people can shift between groups, would be better. The hierarchical structure that we have at the moment is not good. A professor has too much power in relation to his staff and PhD candidates. Why not have people take it in turns to be group leader for a few years? I would be in favour of that.’ But above all, says Scheffer, the sciences should learn from the arts. ‘The sciences and the arts are the two giants of the mind. At first glance they seem completely different, but they actually have a lot in common. Scientists and artists are both working on capturing the essence of things. But where scientists focus on reason, artists are explicitly working with intuition, originality and inventiveness.’ We can learn from that, says Scheffer. ‘At art schools, this is explicitly covered. The way they teach their students to find an interesting subject. How do you find your own approach? How do you pose an interesting question? Asking the right question is one of the most important things in the sciences. And it is far from easy.’
Actually, says Scheffer, there should be a compulsory course in scientific thinking. A course that teaches how science works. ‘How do big breakthroughs come about? What is needed for them besides all kinds of techniques, statistics and experiments? Quite a lot is known about it. And I notice that students are also very keen to hear and talk about it. Is originality something you can learn, and which creative thinking techniques are suitable for that? We only teach our students one side of science. The other side, the exploratory and the playful, is something we never talk about. Why do we keep that a secret?
Photo: Guy Ackermans