“[Credentials] can cause intellectual ossification. To illustrate that point, Mead told the story of how Charles Townes, the inventor of the laser and maser, took his ideas to the leading quantum-mechanics nabobs at the time, Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg: "They both laughed at him, and basically said, 'Sonny, you just don't seem to understand how quantum mechanics works.' Well, history has shown that it wasn't Charlie who didn't know how quantum mechanics works, it was the pontifical experts in the field who didn't know how it worked.”

Carver Mead on { The Future of Science }

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I love this story. It’s about { outsider intelligence } — the idea that contributors from outside of a specialized field can help solve problems within or related to that field, and at times even better than those within the field can. Of course, one has a greater perspective and range of thought when looking from the outside in, rather than being on the inside and having already discarded many ideas that are not immediately relevant to one’s work. Those impertinent ideas help us think creatively — help push us out of the “ditch” (read: Edward de Bono).

{ P.S. }