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H. von Storch, J. S ¨
undermann, and L. Magaard
Could you say names of proponents?
I would say GFDL.
Should the physical oceanographers give more interest to the other disciplines, to
biology, to chemistry, in order to give more exact explanations into these sciences?
Oh yes, it doesn’t hurt, there will always be physicists who are just physicists, but
for an oceanographer general knowledge of the surrounding fields of interest is very
important, if he wants to make his knowledge applicable. If he wants to talk with
a plankton man about vertical mixing or such things, then it is very important that
he has understanding of the mutual subject. So I would say it is a general principle:
additional knowledge doesn’t hurt.
What does it mean for the education of the students? Should we still have this classical
education that they study physics, mathematics, and so on? Or should we have some
general education in marine sciences?
It should not be mandatory but it should be very much encouraged. To make things
mandatory is not a good idea. That means you would prevent a computer programmer
to become an oceanographer by forcing him to do some biology in which he is not
interested at all.
In your career there was always some link to applications. When you did the tuna
business, when you were in Indonesia, there was always an element of usefulness. Is
that so?
No, not useful, but realistic. I’m a realist and I want to work on things that represent the
real world that give an understanding of what there is. I am not a friend of speculations
and fancy theories, I like to analyze facts and put them together and explain them.
Did you have to write in your proposals “this is important for fisheries or for . . .”?
You usually say that.
On your list of items, you ask about the role of science organizations, big
science, universities, centralization. Big projects are necessary, for the very simple,
pragmatic reason that an individual can’t do them. An individual cannot launch a
satellite and use all the data that come back. For big experiments you need cooperation
of many people. This is a practical question. But big science does not mean that one
should take the funding away from all the individual scientists. Individuals have their
own ideas and often very good ones. There are enough scientists that don’t like to be
involved in community projects. So one has to keep a balance between them. The same
basically applies to universities versus government organizations. The universities are
providing diversity and individualists. They allow the individual scientists to do work
outside the mass, and they give him the freedom to do what he likes to do. In contrast,
government science is mostly directed science, that means the people involved in it
are being told what they have to do.
H. von Storch, J. S ¨
undermann, and L. Magaard
Could you say names of proponents?
I would say GFDL.
Should the physical oceanographers give more interest to the other disciplines, to
biology, to chemistry, in order to give more exact explanations into these sciences?
Oh yes, it doesn’t hurt, there will always be physicists who are just physicists, but
for an oceanographer general knowledge of the surrounding fields of interest is very
important, if he wants to make his knowledge applicable. If he wants to talk with
a plankton man about vertical mixing or such things, then it is very important that
he has understanding of the mutual subject. So I would say it is a general principle:
additional knowledge doesn’t hurt.
What does it mean for the education of the students? Should we still have this classical
education that they study physics, mathematics, and so on? Or should we have some
general education in marine sciences?
It should not be mandatory but it should be very much encouraged. To make things
mandatory is not a good idea. That means you would prevent a computer programmer
to become an oceanographer by forcing him to do some biology in which he is not
interested at all.
In your career there was always some link to applications. When you did the tuna
business, when you were in Indonesia, there was always an element of usefulness. Is
that so?
No, not useful, but realistic. I’m a realist and I want to work on things that represent the
real world that give an understanding of what there is. I am not a friend of speculations
and fancy theories, I like to analyze facts and put them together and explain them.
Did you have to write in your proposals “this is important for fisheries or for . . .”?
You usually say that.
On your list of items, you ask about the role of science organizations, big
science, universities, centralization. Big projects are necessary, for the very simple,
pragmatic reason that an individual can’t do them. An individual cannot launch a
satellite and use all the data that come back. For big experiments you need cooperation
of many people. This is a practical question. But big science does not mean that one
should take the funding away from all the individual scientists. Individuals have their
own ideas and often very good ones. There are enough scientists that don’t like to be
involved in community projects. So one has to keep a balance between them. The same
basically applies to universities versus government organizations. The universities are
providing diversity and individualists. They allow the individual scientists to do work
outside the mass, and they give him the freedom to do what he likes to do. In contrast,
government science is mostly directed science, that means the people involved in it
are being told what they have to do.