Roads to Knowledge

Abstract

The broad historical overview given in the last chapter of many of the scientists and their achievements provides an opportunity to take an orthogonal approach and look at the variety of ways in which the individual scientists actually did their work and achieved their great results. Were they alone or in groups? Was it pure inspiration and creativity, or dogged slogging to collect data and forge hypotheses? Did they know what to look for, or did they stumble onto discoveries? Were they just in the right place at the right time? The roads to knowledge are not always as neat and tidy as the classical textbook scientific method would suggest.