Suppose there was someone who was kidnapped and put into a small room with only a bit of light shining under the door. Twenty years later they could tell the story about how they could see clumps of dust in the light, which formed some sort of pattern. Day after day, this is all they could do to pass the time. Eventually they were rescued, and as a result of seeing those patterns this person eventually became a scientist. Amazing story, but I wouldn’t want to draw the conclusion that being held hostage in a tiny room is good preparation for a career in science.

This statement is a claim that there is a pattern, but there is no data to draw this conclusion. About all you can say is that this sometimes happens, but that’s a very weak statement. The use of the word “often” to imply a pattern is not grounded by the data.

As a counter example, I could easily find ten people who didn’t have a beloved object that kindled their interest in science. I don’t think it would then be reasonable to make the claim “that scientists RARELY have some beloved object …”

I remember taking scissors to some cloth dolls and scalping them, because I had no interest in the doll and only wanted the scalp with all the “hair” so that I could try superbraiding them.

My mother always yelled at me because we had these nice carpets and blankets with long yarn/string fringe on the ends, and I would try making superbraids in the carpet or blanket fringe.

I also learned how to square and square-root numbers, and about spacial relations, from playing with legos as a 4-6 year old. I had an “ancient egypt” mini-obsession and I’d build pyramids with the legos. But I had to know how many blocks it took for square-base pyramids, or rectangle-base pyramids, and how I should start the base because if it was the wrong shape then the pyramid wouldn’t be able to get to a one-block “point” at the top. So I learned 1+4+9+16+25+36+49+64. But 8 was my favorite number at the time so I made 8-layer pyramids. And there were also only so many legos available to use.

But I also taught myself to read rather young, and read through the Dorling Kindersly Science Encyclopedia, cover-to-cover by the time I was 6. So there were things I learned from reading, not just from “discovery through playing”.

One thing I remember is that in preschool, we didn’t view toys how I later learned adults thought we viewed toys. To us, they were not “the soft girly pony” or “the hard plastic yellow truck” but they were just 3D objects of various colors and textures. We knew what they were, in terms of “pony toy” “truck toy” etc, but we didn’t really think in terms of “boy toy” “girl toy” or “this is the correct way to play with it” until we learned that from books we were read, or from what adults said. Like how nobody hated vegetables until we were read lots of little-kid books where the characters all hated vegetables. Which made it cool to hate them, because our favorite characters did. Or like, nobody got mad at boys for playing dressup or not liking sports until the little-kid books at read-aloud time said that those boys were sissies. Suddenly toys and clothes and games actually meant something gender-wise. I mean, boys did tend to like more active things, and there were more girls who liked the more imaginative things, but we didn’t see them as innately “boy things” or “girl things” until the books we were read told us so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brassica_romanesco.jpg

I’m okay with that.

Area Girl becomes Computer Scientist despite playing with My Little Pony.
Mattel spokesperson responds, “Girls who play with superior ‘Math is hard!’ Barbie are more likely to avoid science.”

http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~alvarado/

I had a ton of MLPs, and a science degree, but I am extremely bad at braiding. NOW I realize where I went wrong. Curses!

You will find ever littler ponies as you look more closely at it.

It reminded me vividly of my own experience of discovering the musical cycle of fifths as a high school student, mapping key changes mathematically with pencil on paper, as if no one had ever seen it before. Beauty everywhere. I can believe the book is about “science, technology, and love”. ~@MsPorterAtFHS