Angel's messy room this morning, overflowing with all her unsorted
reference literature made me think: well, my office and my study at home
are both a bit (just a little) neater than that -- but my _head_ is
beginning to feel like Angel's room: wherever one of my thoughts tries to
squeeze through, it gets entangled in something that I have read, or ought
to have read. One reference that I didn't find again is the place where I
read the anecdote about Piaget, who, when asked how he could be so
productive, answered that: well, for one thing he didn't have to read
Piaget's collected works before starting his own research...
It is, of course, an anecdote. But it does highlight the advantage
of being an originator, an obligatory point of passage for those who come
later. I guess, taking Piaget as today's example, that it isn't really that
the Originator does not relate to what went before, but that he makes it
superfluous for anybody else to go back to before him... (where did I read
that?)
Marie points at the tenure pressure as working against systematic
theory construction: journal format hi-productivity... Angel made me think
of all the stuff that demands being related to... (do I have a thought that
I can call my own?)...
But, to end on the positive note I pick up and re-mind Vera's image
of theory-building as co-construction and also co-authoring. More like a
coral reef... yes, I'd like to be part of that.
Still I sign:
Eva Ekeblad