How an Above-Average Guy Made a Groundbreaking Contribution to Science
If he could do it, so can you.
Charles Darwin would’ve scored 130 in today’s IQ tests, people estimate.
This is not genius nor gifted, but simply above-average.
Now, few people know this, but Charles had an older brother, Erasmus, who was reportedly way more intelligent than Charles. Yet, it is not Erasmus that made one of the greatest contributions to science ever.
Charles did it. But how?
First, he was willing to work hard
“If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.” ― Michelangelo
Charles Darwin was a workhorse, a freaking machine, relentlessly collecting pieces of evidence and having them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner — for decades.
During the HMS Beagle voyage, for example, he collected thousands of specimens, including plants, animals, fossils, and geological samples, flooding his notebooks with detailed observations.
Not satisfied, after returning from the Beagle voyage, Darwin spent eight years (yes, eight) studying barnacles (yes, barnacles). The result? A four-volume monograph.
And what to say about his last book? “The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms” was based on more than 40 years (!!!) of observations and experiments on earthworms, during which he meticulously recorded data on their behavior and their role in soil formation.
In short, the guy was the precursor of big data.
Second, he was willing to prove himself wrong
While collecting data, Charles paid special attention to information that disconfirmed his beliefs.
In his words:
“I had, also, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from memory than favorable ones.”
These days we have a fancy name for this tendency of facts that contradict our beliefs to be “far more apt to escape from memory”. We call it confirmation bias.
Many “scientists” today burp an idea and want to prove it right. Therefore they pay close attention to data that confirms their beliefs and disregard those that don’t.
And, guess what, this is exactly how they arrive at wrong conclusions about reality. Hello, Flat Earth community. :-)
What good scientists do instead is to strive to prove themselves wrong and, only after repeatedly failing in that pursuit, give themselves permission to start believing they may be right.
Charles again:
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.”
Make no mistake: confirmation bias is the cancer of modern scientific research. While bad scientists let it grow, good scientists extirpate it at once.
Now, was Charles Darwin a mutant less susceptible to confirmation bias? We’ll never know. But what I do know is that if he came up with the theory of natural selection as a mere above-average guy, then you too can make a great contribution to mankind.
All you need is to be willing to work hard and to search for the truth, even if that means being wrong most of the time.
