My experiences are somewhat opposed: I find that as soon as I publicly speak about some such idea, my excitement with it will begin to vanish.
I find it curious that your post makes no mention of the possibility of the idea being right. When people first came up with the theory of evolution, I imagine it having been much like you described. People started applying it to every plant and animal and for that matter every living thing out there, and was the universal explanation for how things turned out to be the way they did. And guess what? They were right! Even more so for people who came up with the laws of physics. Yes, there is a danger if you take it too far, like if you used evolution to justify Moral Darwinism, but talking about this period of initial excitement as a purely negative issue doesn’t sound right either.
In fact, I might personally prefer to extend these periods somewhat: I find that I often forget about applying such a theory after the initial excitement. Theories are declarative knowledge, but applying them is procedural knowledge, which requires practice to develop. The initial burst of excitement creates a brief time period during which you get practice by applying the theory as much as possible. After that, it might easily happen that you don’t remember to seek to apply it, and therefore don’t develop the skill to the point where it comes natural.
Part of higher education is an artificial replacement for this rush of excitement: I’ve heard several students remark that the important thing wasn’t the specific courses they took or any particular facts they learned. Rather the important thing was that they learned to think like (economists/psychologists/computer scientists/Cthulhu cultists).
I’d say trying to “fight” this tendency isn’t necessarily the most productive approach—instead, you might want to embrace such periods, and seek to experience as many of them as possible. That way, you’ll be more likely to have a lasting set of mental tools in your toolkit, that can be applied as variedly as possible.
I truly understand your point and must admit that i think the same for some of your statements, but i think you took it too much as an obvious statement he made and not just a warning. The ″Man-with-a-hammer syndrome″ sounds like it actually apply for people wich have the common bad reflexe on applying something on everything and making it work. That’s how i understand ″to the man with a hammer, every problem tends to look pretty much like a nail.″, no matter if it’s an internationnal war or a problem between a dad and his child who don’t want to eat dinner, they reduce it to a simple reason that could resolve everything if we could remove it (I think we can agree that there’s an edge between those two). For me, Shalmanese just warned us to prevent getting to that point where we just get to much into it.
And about that point you made on physics, quantum is one of the biggest example. Too many person took it as the ultimate law, and people like Heinsenberg, pure genius, even said that nothing could overpass it and today, there’s so many people finding problem with it. I won’t get too much into this topic, not the point here, just saying that you probably took it too much as an official law he made against ″bright idea you got that explain a lot″ and didn’t separate two different thing as the one you state and the one he did.
(Sorry if you can’t understand everything, i’m french and don’t have that much time to do a proper explanation of my idea)
My experiences are somewhat opposed: I find that as soon as I publicly speak about some such idea, my excitement with it will begin to vanish.
I find it curious that your post makes no mention of the possibility of the idea being right. When people first came up with the theory of evolution, I imagine it having been much like you described. People started applying it to every plant and animal and for that matter every living thing out there, and was the universal explanation for how things turned out to be the way they did. And guess what? They were right! Even more so for people who came up with the laws of physics. Yes, there is a danger if you take it too far, like if you used evolution to justify Moral Darwinism, but talking about this period of initial excitement as a purely negative issue doesn’t sound right either.
In fact, I might personally prefer to extend these periods somewhat: I find that I often forget about applying such a theory after the initial excitement. Theories are declarative knowledge, but applying them is procedural knowledge, which requires practice to develop. The initial burst of excitement creates a brief time period during which you get practice by applying the theory as much as possible. After that, it might easily happen that you don’t remember to seek to apply it, and therefore don’t develop the skill to the point where it comes natural.
Part of higher education is an artificial replacement for this rush of excitement: I’ve heard several students remark that the important thing wasn’t the specific courses they took or any particular facts they learned. Rather the important thing was that they learned to think like (economists/psychologists/computer scientists/Cthulhu cultists).
I’d say trying to “fight” this tendency isn’t necessarily the most productive approach—instead, you might want to embrace such periods, and seek to experience as many of them as possible. That way, you’ll be more likely to have a lasting set of mental tools in your toolkit, that can be applied as variedly as possible.
I truly understand your point and must admit that i think the same for some of your statements, but i think you took it too much as an obvious statement he made and not just a warning. The ″Man-with-a-hammer syndrome″ sounds like it actually apply for people wich have the common bad reflexe on applying something on everything and making it work. That’s how i understand ″to the man with a hammer, every problem tends to look pretty much like a nail.″, no matter if it’s an internationnal war or a problem between a dad and his child who don’t want to eat dinner, they reduce it to a simple reason that could resolve everything if we could remove it (I think we can agree that there’s an edge between those two). For me, Shalmanese just warned us to prevent getting to that point where we just get to much into it.
And about that point you made on physics, quantum is one of the biggest example. Too many person took it as the ultimate law, and people like Heinsenberg, pure genius, even said that nothing could overpass it and today, there’s so many people finding problem with it. I won’t get too much into this topic, not the point here, just saying that you probably took it too much as an official law he made against ″bright idea you got that explain a lot″ and didn’t separate two different thing as the one you state and the one he did.
(Sorry if you can’t understand everything, i’m french and don’t have that much time to do a proper explanation of my idea)