Spider-scientist

I was absorbed in abyssal thoughts about my research when a little black spider landed on my left shoulder from totally nowhere!

I have been quite amazed with spiders recently: how do they manage to build their webs hanging between two unrelated objects? That don't make no sense to me! (Also, the other day when I went running - in fact it was this morning - I was thinking about the fact that spiders always seem to know where they can build their webs and where they don't, for example in a place with a high circulation; but then I thought it certainly is absurd to think about it that way...)

And so, plötzlich, it struck me that a researcher has something to learn from a spider, in fact. Just like the spider, he is flying through the air from one idea to the other, blown by the wind of his imagination, and like the spider, his ultimate goal is the construction of a large web of concepts (able to catch some juicy preys... for the SOUL nigga!).

[As an aside, I would put forth the comment that when Witten was saying string theory is a piece of the XXIst century mathematics (did he venture to say IIIrd millenium?) fallen by chance into the XXth century, that would translate in my metaphor into a spider web with positive slope, built with the help of a favourable wind.]

But that only works if the researcher keeps track of his own thought process. If the line breaks, it won't be possible to relate the distant concepts, and everything is lost. Which, as you may imagine, is just what happened to me that day when the little spider paid me an unexpected visit... She was clearly philosophical enough to know that sometimes when you want to get a message through you have to violate its spirit.