Understand, just understand, understand how something works, what makes it tick, in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, the economy, etc., just, darn it, UNDERSTAND ....
As we know well from experience and might expect, just understand
is nearly necessary for a huge fraction of fantastic progress and often sufficient or nearly so. The track record is the best of any allocation of resources.
Or toss some rocks into the camp fire and in the morning find some clump at the bottom. Then, try to UNDERSTAND that? That clump is different; what the heck is it? This was the first time saw this; what caused it? Can do that again?
Okay, just used the carbon in the fire to remove the oxygen from copper oxide and leave some copper metal. Start of exploitation of metals for humans ....
As we know well from experience and might expect, just understand is nearly necessary for a huge fraction of fantastic progress and often sufficient or nearly so. The track record is the best of any allocation of resources.
Or toss some rocks into the camp fire and in the morning find some clump at the bottom. Then, try to UNDERSTAND that? That clump is different; what the heck is it? This was the first time saw this; what caused it? Can do that again?
Okay, just used the carbon in the fire to remove the oxygen from copper oxide and leave some copper metal. Start of exploitation of metals for humans ....