Foxes and hedgehogs in science?
The fox/hedgehog distinction is used to describe 2 different ways people think. The gist goes back to ancient greece and the idea that the hedgehog knows one big thing whereas the fox knows many littler things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox
For scientists, it's sometimes described as how distributed the topics are that you work on (eg mile deep, inch wide versus mile wide, inch deep):
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13437-022-00287-x
A slightly different way to think about it is more along what some call simplifiers vs complexifiers.
When individuals are forecasting elections, pundits (hedgehogs) tend to focus on one big idea and they are less good at forecasting than individuals who take a lot of data in and work to reconcile conflicts (foxes):
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691178288/expert-political-judgment
Similarly, much of this biography about Barbara McClintock can paraphrased with the notion that she was a fox who saw details that would not fit with what the hedgehogs were saying and that led her to some big discoveries about jumping genes:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805074581/afeelingfortheorganism10thaniversaryedition
At the same time, hedgehogs play an important role by keeping their eyes on the forest and connecting the dots together.
There is something powerful to the idea that there are two different but complementary ways of thinking that contribute to science. How do you think about it? Which are you?
@NicoleCRust While Tetlock’s Expert Political Judgement is an important and interesting (though at times demanding) read on this topic, I would recommend his newer Superforecasting, which takes the ideas a few steps further and is (no doubt thanks to Dan Gardner’s writing style) a bit easier to digest.
