michael_nielsen

In research, both problem finding and problem solving are important. Surprisingly often, problem finding is more important than problem solving.

There's a rare, related activity which I think of as field finding. It's not about problem finding, per se, but rather about developing an underlying narrative which generates many superb problems over decades or centuries.

Most of my favourite papers are field finding.

Turing's paper on computing is field finding. So too are Feynman and Deutsch's papers on quantum computing.

By comparison, the early Sanger (et al) sequencing papers were field founding - they started a field - but not field finding, since it was obvious for many years prior that sequencing DNA (or RNA) was a good idea. Sanger et al were the first to really figure out how to do it.

Obviously, the distinction isn't black & white. Eg in Turing's case you can argue that the problem of developing a notion of effective computation was implicit in earlier work (eg Hilbert). But Turing understood the big picture problem superbly, & made it obvious this was a field

I've seen and heard lots of discussion of field founding, usually in a Sanger-like context: figuring out how to make progress on big problems that are more or less obvious to everyone.

But I've heard very, very little about field finding. And I believe field finders are (a) incredibly valuable for science; and (b) dramatically undervalued by existing institutions.