Waiting for the Apple to Fall, or Pooling Our Brainpower

The vast majority of scientific endeavor is, of course, quite ordinary. Thus the research projects in which we engage ourselves are relatively pedestrian, constituting little more than building blocks for major advances. Of course, such "normal" science is absolutely essential in that it provides the raw empirical material for progress in understanding. Pe riodically an extraordinary event occurs that enables a novel breakthrough. Occasionally, this may be just a serendipitous discovery by a more-or-less "ordinary" scientist (provided, of course, that someone has the wisdom to appreciate the true significance of the discov ery and the creativity to develop it). But, more often than not, major new directions are charted by rare individuals with incredible in tellectual prowess. Population biology has attracted a few of these extraordinary people in the past, and ecology today stands poised, awaiting another such genius. But time's a wasting?the very systems we study are rapidly being destroyed by the press of hu manity. In the words of Holmes-Rolston (BioScience 1985), "Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language that humans hardly know how to read." Just as ecologists are finally begin ning to learn to read the "unread" (and rap idly disappearing) book, they are encounter ing governmental and public hostility and having difficulties attracting support. This backlash in response to rabid environmental ism is most unwise and must be changed. In the meantime, we simply cannot afford to wait patiently for our next genius to pop up. The rest of us could benefit immeasur ably from attempting to simulate inductive genius by means of think tanks. At a recent NSF workshop in Santiago, Chile, I was im