Proper navigation of this juncture of old vs. new, past vs. future, dull vs. exciting, known vs. unknown is critical in avoiding a morass of ill fates. These include reinvention, duplication, and attendant ridicule or censure by colleagues for failing to build upon or acknowledge what those before us have done. Following the siren of exploration without investigating where others have traveled is fraught with risks—the worst being when the fork's two branches loop back on one another, revealing that they are one continuum. What had seemed to be uncharted territory is unveiled as a Mobius path toward the fool's gold of rediscovery.
The essence of an ever-expanding map, revealing where science is and how it developed, exists in the combined published literature, unpublished knowledge of experts, and in the insight of visionaries. Unfortunately, this many-dimensional map is highly fragmented, a dynamic jigsaw work that's never fully assembled—the unique cleft ...
