“Eureka moments are less important than you think.”

How do scientists arrive at that single vision that defines the course of their careers? They talk about this in the Eureka section, every weekend advertisementIntroduction by my editors new world. This time: Frank van Harmelen, professor of artificial intelligence at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

‘This is a term Eureka It comes from the Greek mathematician Archimedes (287-212 BC) when he discovered that a submerged body becomes lighter by the weight of the displaced fluid, which is now Archimedes’ law he is called.

According to legend, after this discovery, he kept running naked through the streets of Syracuse repeating the exclamation “eureka” (“I found it”). The romantic version of scientific breakthroughs is that of the super-intelligent individual who has a sudden brilliant idea.

Great of course, but thanks to the book Where do good ideas come from? From American author Stephen Johnson, I discovered that this is completely wrong. He describes how quick intuitive judgments, as powerful as they can be, are rare in the history of new ideas.

Most intuitions that lead to important innovations unfold over a much longer period of time. They begin mysteriously, are difficult to describe, and linger in the shadows of our consciousness, often for years or longer. A newly discovered association, information, or perhaps another insight from a colleague can change this. Please note that this process takes a lot of time.

Albert Einstein is sometimes called the last single scientist to discover something on his own. Then it became teamwork. First from small teams, such as Watson and Crick, the discoverers of the structure of DNA. Nowadays, big teams have emerged, such as the discoverers of the human genome or the Z boson.

Of course it’s a shame to get attached to the romantic image, but science is not an individual discovery, but more like slow cooking done by a large number of chefs.