The Eastern and Western approach in doing something professionally and properly.
From Biojustice.net
The proper ways of doing job including performing science are different in the Eastern and Western cultures. - A personal thought-I discovered that western approach is based on regulation and social rules represented by laws and ethics. Therefore, they tend to follow logical guidlines and honestly and decenttly. People who try to bend the rules and acting crooked are bad.
In the Eastern cultures (as far as Korean one goes in my personal opinion), doing proper job including science is about refining the arts and techniques. They are less concerned by regulations or law books. Really good scientists or any masters are advanced in moral behaviours with some authority. They try to have respect from you by performing some practice dilligently and artfully.
The problem of western way is that sometimes, as long as all other researchers do or the trend goes, to perform research in the commonly accepted way is fine. Therefore, if many of my colleagues tend to steal other's ideas and write bad reviews intentionnally to suppress other's work, it is not that bad and you do not have to feel that bad, either. As it is the ongoing rule. That is the rule of the game. No fancy philosophical consideration is necessary. They are practical and know that they are safe enough and won't be sued legally. As long as you know some basic guidelines in the lab and the university you are in, you are OK. Anyway, doing science is a competition in this competitive capitalistic society.
This kind of attitude can be practical and productive enough, however, it inherently contains some cost and it can produce a lot of very able scientists who are more like professional technicians and produce good graduates who can perform very well in companies. Clear side effect of this is that some Ph.D. candidates go into review committee and shoot all of the supervisors with guns. Ph.D. students sue their academic supervisors for not being able to guide them properly and give them the promised Ph.D. degree. The degree is a practical commodity rather than some kind of abstract and philosophical art or way of life.
I have seen many such researchers in my bioinformatics field. Often, I see there is no philosophical thoughts on what they have been doing. They are not real masters. They are efficient technicians. They try to compete and outperform rather than enjoy, train their minds and live the way of doing science.
I think it is very unfortuate that young researchers lose the chance to glimpse how beautiful a biochemistry lecture can be. So beautiful that you cry and your spine would vibrate. So many students in college classes try to copy down what the professors say to prepare exams. They end up becoming very efficient (but not so efficient than future computer algorithms) data retrieval systems.
Then, what is happening in the Estern way of doing research.
For thousands of years, doing academic research in the East meant doing some impractical philosophy. Science and technology were for lower class people. Also, the definition of science is of course different from the modern Western ones. This resulted in a strange combination of impractical and half superstitious western style scientists in the East. Western science is not just a way of doing things or feel, insight, and studying. It has precise procedures, logic, and physical data. Modern Korean and Asian scientists I have known are interesting species. They took up technical parts of western science while keeping sophistic and authoratative scholar attitudes. However, sometimes, awaken philsophers are also found due to abstract and insight based thinking habits. This kind of people are now disappearing as eastern cultures become gradually assimilate to the one of USA in many ways. Unfortunately, they seem to become the masters/artists in becoming competitors and realistist factories of knowledge without much artistic self reflection and philsophical exploration.
Postscript
I think being a good scientist means that he/she need to be aware of the art and masterfulness of science. He/she has good practical solutions accompanied by serious and philosophical thinking. Scientists can be viewed as white coat experimentalists with a bit of Nitsche and Freud. He/she can be told as a master and philosopher for his/her intellectual depth with reaching interest to ethics.
New Science as a gigantic computer program
Science as a whole is becoming a more regular procedure. It is effectively a giant computer function. In the future, philosophy will be computable. What this means is that each individual scientist will function as a specialized module in a gigantic science machine. The philosophical module will have to come up with more advanced and economical paradigms for others.
One major challenge
One major challenge for the future philosophical computation module(i.e., some scientists) is how insightfully they can network the diverse science modules into a biological organism of solving problems.
-- Jong Bhak
