FOM: natural examples

[Martin Davis]

At 04:59 PM 7/29/99 +0100, s.b.cooper at leeds.ac.uk wrote:
>Just a short remark in regard to part 2 of Steve's summary of Harvey's
>comments (circulated in his Wed 28 July FOM message):
>
I want to applaud Barry's message and to add the following:

Efforts to decide in advance which lines of inquiry are productive and
policies designed to channel researchers into such lines are fundamentally
mistaken. The only worthwhile criterion is the ability of individual
researchers. Let them decide what they want to do.

My paradigmatic example of fund dispensers deciding how genius should direct
its talents is the Dukes of Hannover insisting that Leibniz take as his
primary task the researching of their family history.


                           Martin Davis
                   Visiting Scholar UC Berkeley
                     Professor Emeritus, NYU
                         martin at eipye.com
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                       http://www.eipye.com