I had little idea what the point of it was, but it was a trick that I could do.”
So John Sulston writes in his book, co-written by Georgina Ferry, The Common Thread, about the international scientific effort to map the human genome (and how private interests sought to sabotage the government-funded collaboration for their own gain; if anyone thinks the private company Celera in any way lived up to their hype that they would do it cheaper and faster, and wouldn’t try to patent genes or hold back information for profit, they need to read this book for the insider view).
Sulston is talking about the Baconian approach to science: gathering data without a hypothesis. He came up with a technique based on a new technology or method, and applied it just for the sake of it, with no preconceived notions in mind. In his case, it led fairly directly to sequencing the genome, quite the payoff.
Payoffs come in writing, too, when we are prepared to follow leads without worrying about other people’s expectations, what we thought we were writing when we started out, how commercial or mainstream the work is, and so on: when we write for the sake of writing, not to meet our preconceived ideas.
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