“Most researchers, including Nobel laureates, are narrow journeymen, with no more interest in the human condition that the usual run of laymen. Scientists are to science what masons are to cathedrals. Catch any one of them outside the workplace, and you will likely find someone leading an ordinary life preoccupied with quotidian tasks and pedestrian thought. Scientists seldom make leaps of the imagination. Most, in fact, never have a truly original idea. Instead, they snuffle their way through masses of data and hypotheses (the latter are educated guesses to be tested), sometimes excited but most of the time tranquil and easily distracted by corridor gossip and other entertainments. They have to be that way. The successful scientist thinks like a poet, and then only in rare moments of inspiration, if ever, and works like a bookkeeper the rest of the time. It is very hard to have an original thought. So, for most of his career, the scientist is satisfied to enter the figures and balance the books.”

– E.O. Wilson, The Creation (p. 103-104)