The Scientists Who Almost Chose Another Life

As a young man, Darwin seriously planned to become a country clergyman. When he went to Cambridge, he was preparing for that career. Before that, his father had wanted him to study medicine. Darwin spent two academic years in Edinburgh and grew less interested in becoming a doctor. His father saw this and, unwilling to watch his son turn into a man who did nothing but hunt and idle, proposed another plan: become a clergyman. Darwin did not reject it outright. He found the life of a country clergyman rather appealing. His only reservation was whether he could accept all the doctrines of the Church of England. So he read theological works seriously and finally convinced himself that this road was one he could take.

This experience is easily written as an awakening story: the future scientist saw through religion and chose science. Darwin himself said that the plan to become a clergyman, and his father's wish, were never formally abandoned. After he left Cambridge and joined the voyage of the Beagle, it gradually died a natural death. There was no solemn declaration of a career. Another life began, and the earlier road was slowly no longer taken.

And he nearly failed even to get on the ship. In 1831 his father opposed his joining the Beagle voyage, and his reasons were concrete: the plan was too risky, it might make him unable ever to settle into a stable life afterward, and it would not help his future identity as a clergyman. Darwin had already written to decline the invitation. His uncle Josiah Wedgwood answered his father's worries one by one and personally took Darwin to persuade him. In the end his father agreed. His uncle did not say, “Your son will one day propose evolution, so do not hold him back.” His reasons were more ordinary: Darwin already had wide-ranging curiosity, and this voyage would let him see people and things few had a chance to see; natural history research would not necessarily harm a clergyman's standing. The family was discussing whether a young man should accept a rare opportunity.

Later Darwin recalled that the Beagle voyage was the most important event of his life and determined his entire career. He also remembered that this great event had depended on such a detail as his uncle being willing to drive him to see his father. What worried his father was that his son was changing careers again. What his uncle thought was that this child was worth going out to see the world. Evolution was not part of anyone's plan then.

Put Darwin back into this perspective, and many destined stories in the history of science begin to loosen.

Copernicus studied canon law in Bologna, received a doctorate in canon law at Ferrara, and long served as a canon of the Warmia Cathedral, taking part in church administration, economic affairs, and medical work. Astronomical observation and mathematical thought were part of a large professional life, not the declaration of a boy resolved to overthrow geocentrism. We later place his On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres at the center of the Scientific Revolution. Copernicus's own life was first of all the life of a canon lawyer and churchman.

Tycho Brahe came from a noble family, and his family wanted him to follow the path of law and politics. In 1562 he was sent to the University of Leipzig to study law. By day he learned what he would need to become an official or a lawyer. By night he watched the stars. Later astronomical observation swallowed the legal road. If we write only that Tycho loved astronomy from childhood, we erase the young man torn between family expectations and personal interest.

Kepler studied at the theological seminary at Tübingen; his original direction was the ministry. Later he accepted a position as a mathematics teacher and gradually turned toward astronomy. His life was not stable. Religious conflict, war, and poverty repeatedly interrupted it. He did not begin with the conviction that he would be an astronomer. Rather, he was pushed along by the times among the identities of seminarian, teacher, and court mathematician.

At Trinity College, Cambridge, Newton's fellows were normally required to take holy orders. He studied theology seriously and prepared for that road. Later he obtained a dispensation from the ordinary requirement of ordination, which allowed him to remain in his academic post. In seventeenth-century Cambridge, a natural philosopher's career and the church system were not sharply separated. Newton later wrote a large body of theological manuscripts. We need not say he was almost a clergyman, but his life once stood very close to a conventional path toward holy orders.

Mendel came from a farming family and was poor. As a young man he nearly took over the family farm and became a farmer. He wanted to become a teacher, but to gain a stable life and access to education, he eventually entered the Brno monastery, became a priest, and taught mathematics and natural history at the monastery and in schools. Mendel's pea experiments, which later made him the father of genetics, took place within the professional framework of a priest and teacher. Within the limited space provided by the priesthood and teaching, he managed to do science.

Before science became a profession, holy orders, law, teaching posts, and court positions often served as containers for science. A person seriously considering these roads did not mean he was far from science. He might simply have been looking, in that era, for a place where curiosity could be housed.

Galileo initially studied medicine at the University of Pisa. This was his father's expectation. He lacked enthusiasm for the medical curriculum but was drawn to mathematics. Later he turned to mathematics and eventually became a natural philosopher. We easily write this experience as a genius rebelling against paternal authority. The situation was more like a young man repeatedly weighing family expectations against personal interest. He did not know from the start that he would become Galileo. He only became increasingly clear that the scalpel and the medical textbook were not what he wanted to take up.

Descartes studied law at the University of Poitiers and received a law degree. His father wanted him to follow a legal career. Later he chose to travel, serve in the army, and think about mathematics and philosophy. He did not immediately announce that he would be a philosopher. In a relatively free, even somewhat wandering life, he gradually found his own questions.

Lavoisier received a complete legal training and qualified as a lawyer, but what fascinated him was chemistry and geology. Legal education gave him social standing, administrative ability, and training in expression. It did not determine his life. Linnaeus studied medicine, received a medical doctorate, and later became famous for plant taxonomy. Medicine was his professional training. Botany was where his enthusiasm lay.

These career changes were not always breaks. A person's early training in law or medicine might later become administrative ability, habits of observation, writing skills, and institutional resources. Do not write these stories as if he finally abandoned a vulgar profession and rushed toward pure science. Law and medicine were not vulgar, and science was not nobler from the start. What matters is how a person carried old training into a new road.

Before William Herschel became an astronomer, he was a professional musician. In his early years he played in a band with his father. Later in England he worked as an organist, band conductor, composer, and music teacher. Music was his livelihood and also his profession. Astronomy was at first an amateur hobby. He made his own telescopes, observed the sky, and eventually discovered Uranus. Music training gave him income, a precise sense of rhythm, manual skill, and the habit of long concentration. All of these were later used in telescope making and observational records.

Planck had extraordinary musical talent, played the piano very well, and was also quite outstanding in classical philology. As a young man, he did hesitate among music, classical philology, and physics. He eventually chose physics. But Planck's early years were not made only of formulas. Music and classical languages shaped a person's sensibility, sense of order, and way of expression.

After graduating from college, Skinner spent two years trying with all his effort to become a writer. He wrote, submitted manuscripts, experienced failure, and finally turned to psychology. The choice came after a realistic setback. His later study of behavior, reinforcement, and habit may have had some hidden echo with his own attempt to build a writing habit and face creative failure. There is no need to over-interpret this echo, but it can be acknowledged: a scientist once seriously wanted to be a writer, and this fact alone is enough to break the monotonous imagination that scientists only love science.

Oppenheimer had a strong interest in literature, philosophy, and poetry in his early years. His inner life was not made only of chemistry or physics. Later, when he turned from chemistry to physics at Harvard, he gradually narrowed his direction amid wide-ranging interests.

When discussing completely different career paths, it is easy to think only of active hesitation: wanting to be a clergyman, wanting to study law, wanting to be a musician. History also contains another situation. Some people were blocked from science by reality rather than tempted by another road. For them, a different career path was a threshold for survival.

Faraday came from a bookbinder's apprentice background. He had no conditions to enter university step by step and receive a gentleman's scientific education. Through reading, attending lectures, self-study, and writing letters, he entered Davy's laboratory. He first worked as an apprentice to make a living, then found a way to get closer to science. This difference in career path was caused more by class and educational opportunity. He read science in the bookbinding workshop and then seized an extremely narrow opportunity.

Marie Curie faced similar limits in her early years. Because of her family circumstances and the educational restrictions on women at the time, she worked for many years as a governess, supporting her sister's studies in Paris while studying on her own and waiting for an opportunity. Later she went to Paris to study and embarked on a scientific path. A woman under institutional constraints used the job of governess to exchange for a chance to get closer to science. Place this experience beside Darwin's clergyman plan, and one sees the different textures of career forks. Darwin's fork had family discussion and class margin. Curie's fork was more a detour under pressure.

Mendel's entry into the monastery was not entirely a purely spiritual choice. It also involved poverty and practical considerations of educational opportunity. The monastery gave him a stable life and opportunities for study and teaching. Later he planted peas in the garden and conducted hybridization experiments. We can say Mendel became a priest, and we can also say he was taken in by the monastic system and did science within it. The two statements are not contradictory. A career path is never only a matter of personal interest. It is also a matter of family, class, gender, and institutions.

These stories break teleology. We too easily infer early roads backward from later results: because Darwin proposed evolution, his boyhood interest in beetles was a scientific sprout; because Planck became a physicist, his early love of music was rich humanistic accomplishment. This way of writing is smooth, but it turns history into an exam question whose answer is already known. Early life has no answer. Darwin did not know the Beagle would determine his career. His father worried that his son was changing careers again. His uncle thought only that this child was worth going out to see the world. Evolution was not in anyone's plan.

These stories also show the historicity of the scientific profession. Today we treat scientist as a profession, but before the nineteenth century the word did not exist. Many people lived on church posts, legal practice, medical work, court stipends, or family property. Science was only part of their lives. Kepler needed the post of court mathematician. Newton needed the position of college fellow. Mendel needed the stable life of the monastery. Herschel needed music income. Science did not grow out of a vacuum. It needed institutional containers. The reason there were so many career forks is precisely that science itself was not yet fully institutionalized.

They also show how professional identity is formed. We are used to writing career choice as a declaration: I decide to become a scientist. Darwin's example tells us that more often professional identity is slow and unfinished. The plan to become a clergyman was not formally abandoned. After the Beagle voyage it gradually died a natural death. There was no dramatic break, only another life beginning, and the earlier road slowly no longer being taken. This natural death is closer to most people's experience than awakening. A person does not suddenly become a scientist one day. Through a series of choices, accidents, and delays, he slowly becomes the person we later name.

In writing about scientists' early years, the easiest mistake is pruning away the forks: deleting all experiences unrelated to the final achievement and leaving only evidence that he loved science from childhood. Good biographies often preserve the unfinished tense. The father's concrete worries, the uncle's point-by-point response, Galileo's boredom with medical textbooks, Herschel's musical livelihood, Skinner's failed submissions: these details do not prove he was destined to become a scientist. They prove he was a person making choices in concrete life. The history of science likes to prune roads into straight lines. The historical scene is overgrown with weeds.

Return to Darwin. In 1831, when he boarded the Beagle, he was not a young man who had already seen through religion and was preparing to shock the world with evolution. He was a person who had not yet settled on a career, a person who had seriously prepared to become a country clergyman, a person whose father worried he would change careers again, a person who nearly declined the invitation because of his father's opposition. He vomited on the ship, suffered seasickness, observed fossils, collected specimens, and did not know he was becoming Darwin. Evolution had not yet entered anyone's plan.

These stories bring scientists down from monuments and put them back into the hesitation a young person ought to have. Copernicus studied canon law, Tycho studied law, Kepler prepared for the ministry, Galileo studied medicine, Descartes studied law, Newton studied theology, Planck hesitated between music and physics, Skinner seriously tried to be a writer, Mendel looked for a way out between poverty and the monastery, Faraday taught himself in a bookbinding workshop, and Curie used a governess's salary to buy a chance to get closer to science. They were later called scientists. At certain moments in their early years they were simply people standing among several roads.

A career path is never a line drawn in advance. Family expectations, institutional opportunities, accidental encounters, economic pressure, and personal curiosity shape it together. Science ultimately came to possess these people through both personal persistence and the opportunities of their times. The roads not taken did not disappear. They simply stopped being taken.

Before a person becomes a scientist, he is first of all a person who does not know the future.