Tinkering
These are some of the toys scientists play with: numbers; mathematical equations; molecular models; laboratory animals; machines, such as spectrometers. Numbers? Arithmeticians are fond of theorems about certain types of numbers. There are for instance “perfect” numbers, defined as those numbers which identify with the sum of their factors. 6 and 28 are the first two such perfect numbers. Prime numbers are another category, and there are many games mathematicians play in order to devise a natural history of these wonderful objects (not only wonderful, useful too for encryption of messages nowadays in the Age of the Internet). Fibonacci numbers, each of which by definition is the sum of the two previous numbers in the sequence, are another such mathematical toy.
Mathematical equations? It will suffice to remind ourselves that both complex numbers and group theory arose out of the consideration of the solutions to polynomials of various degrees. Again, mathematical equations are not only toys for the mathematician but are also useful in accounting for the real world, from the description of planetary motion (Newton and Laplace) to the predicted existence of the positron (Dirac).
Molecular models? Linus Pauling was playing with such toys, which he was putting together himself, when he discovered the structure of proteins. And, when he convened a press conference in Pasadena to announce the discovery, he gave pride of place to a model of the alpha helix. The DNA double helix, as a model, was from the outset one of the cultural icons for the second half of the twentieth century.
A biologist will play likewise with laboratory animals, with microbiological cultures. Those essentials to experimental science have a hybrid status, mixing-in the toy and the tool, the instrument and the substrate, the friendly and the mysterious.
More generally yet, a laboratory with its instrumentation is a playroom. The instrument is a link to the object of investigation: just as the transitional object for a young child as defined by D.W. Winnicott, the psychoanalyst (in the Peanuts comics strip, Linus’s blanket was such a transitional object, mediating between Linus and the world).
Let me bring in at this point the testimony of a fellow chemist, Joseph B. Lambert, a professor at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois:
“When I grew up, every kid put in some serious sandbox time, and it
often involved building (what seemed like) complex sand structures
around which fantasies were composed and competitions took place
with neighbourhood kids. The organic chemistry labs (at Yale during
the junior year) were fun in the same way. We constructed molecules
and competed with each other in the class on speed and yield. We
mixed things up, and chemical transformations took place. We
separated, we isolated, we analyzed. The odors were pleaasant, and the
physical process of working with our hands, as with sand, was
satisfying. The biweekly organic labs became the high points of my
week. By the end of the year, I knew that I wanted to be an organic
chemist, as I realized one could play in the sandbox for a living.”
You will have noted, in passing, some of the key elements: the sensuous pleasures of holding and modifying matter, of smelling chemicals; the fantasying about the structures erected out of sand; the competition with other kids; the seriousness of play.
All these are components of the activity of the bricoleur, of the tinkerer. As a hobby, le bricoleur puts together, by himself/herself, devices in the household which normally only a professional craftsman would be capable of. Besides being amateurish, the activity of the tinkerer is also very much one of “make do”: to compensate with one’s inventivity for the lack of a specific tool or skill. Implicit in tinkering is the devising of original devices or contraptions which empower the tinkerer with otherwise absent abilities. There is thus an important component of play in tinkering, rooted in such empowerment. It comes about from giving a nonobvious, a secondary meaning or use to something, to a tool, adapting it for a novel purpose. The tinkerer extends the use i.e. the meaning of a tool.
Scientists are tinkerers. They will tinker with such toys of their trade as I have mentioned already. They will divert a piece of apparatus from its original purpose for novel uses. They will come up with ingenious devices to “do the job.” The apparatus which Millikan geared up to measure the charge of the electron is an historical example of such inspired tinkering. A more recent is Dr. Salvador Moncada’s adapting the device used for measuring emission of nitrogen oxides in car exhausts to studying production of nitric oxide in various biological tissues.
Diversion from the intended use is a major factor, to the child at play in the sandbox as well as to the tinkerer. The former may use his shovel in other guises, from a flagpole to a javelin, as a road, a river or a railroad, as a bridge, as a tool for poking circular holes, etc. The scientist-as-tinkerer will, very often, use as a tool the end-result from a prior investigation. This is how, for instance, plant lectins became powerful instruments in carbohydrate chemistry, in immunology and in quite a few other disciplines.