I heard something about Einstein recently. It was that his paper
on special relativity had no references. Or something to that
effect.
I personally am no Einstein of course. But I think that the reason
I did not get into more scientific areas of discipline had a lot
to do with references.
To show references means that you to some degree comply with the
established order. You show that your thinking falls inside this
box or the other. I can see the benefit of this when the amount
of data you can reach fits on an average sized bookshelf.
I remember, very vaguely, there was some anecdote about how many
books you have to read to be considered a person with classical
liberal education, or some such thing. It was about three meters
of books. This was a couple of hundred years ago. In those days
it would make sense to put down your references because all of
your peers had the same library. I think this has stopped
mattering a long time ago.
I think the situation is even worse than not mattering. I think
that if you happen to be a creative thinker, to try and match
your thoughts into the existing literature will weaken your
capacity for any real innovation.
To continue the path others have shown us is sort of like a
tree branching, but I don't think anyone is able to find another
tree if they only focus on branching.
