Specialization Quotes

Only by strict specialization can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, that he has achieved something that will endure. A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a specialized accomplishment.[Nur durch strenge Spezialisierung kann der wissenschaftliche Arbeiter tatsächlich das Vollgefühl, einmal und vielleicht nie wieder im Leben, sich zu eigen machen: hier habe ich etwas geleistet, was dauern wird. Eine wirklich endgültige und tüchtige Leistung ist heute stets: eine spezialistische Leistung.]

I believe that a scientist looking at non-scientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

Can any of us fix anything? No. None of us can do that. We’re specialized. Each of us has his own line, his own work. I understand my work, you understand yours. The tendency in evolution is toward greater and greater specialization. Man’s society is an ecology that forces adaptation to it. Continual complexity makes it impossible for any of us to know anything outside our own personal field – I can’t follow the work of the man sitting at the next desk over from me. Too much knowledge has piled up in each field. And there are too many fields.

And of course the time comes when you realize that you haven’t merely been specializing in something – something has been specializing in you.