Conjectures, refutations, and extrapolations.

One reason why I have enjoyed reading earlier prefatory chapters is for the glimpses one gets of how the perception of problems, and insights into their nature, have grown from chance readings, comments by colleagues, or unexpected results. There is also the broader perspective on the evolution of our discipline and on the interactions among scientists. In short, they reveal the human face of science. But writing such a prefatory chapter is a different matter, as earlier authors have indicated. Scientists of my generation were trained to avoid the personal pronoun. “Art is I, Science is we,” as Claude Bernard stated.