Four Golden Lessons

From physicist Steven Weinberg (1933-2021), thoughts for students and researchers (and everybody else!) in a short essay in Nature (2003) titled "Four Golden Lessons", based on a commencement talk at McGill University:

• "... no one knows everything, and you don't have to ..." – get to work and learn as you go along
• "... while you are swimming and not sinking you should aim for rough water ..." – look for topics that aren't fully resolved, i.e., "... go for the messes – that's where the action is ..."
• "... forgive yourself for wasting time ..." – "... As you will never be sure which are the right problems to work on, most of the time that you spend [...] will be wasted. If you want to be creative, then you will have to get used to spending most of your time not being creative, to being becalmed on the ocean of [...] knowledge. ..."
• "... learn something about the history [of your field] ..." – both for practical useful reasons, and to put your work in perspective as part of building civilization

(cf Research and Life (2000-09-07), Time to Read (2003-03-08), Great Thoughts Time (2013-11-29), Tolerate Ambiguity (2018-02-01), Hard, Hard Problem (2021-03-21), ...) - ^z - 2021-08-06