What is it like to be a scientist?

There is a nice insightful article What I wish my pastor knew .. about the life of a scientist by Andy Crouch. It is based on the authors insights that come from being married to a physicist. I think the article may be useful and challenging to anyone who wants a more accurate picture about what science is and is not, not just to pastors. Here are few choice extracts:

The honest, and humbling, truth is that there is likely more intellectual humility in the average physics laboratory than in the average theology classroom... 

Scientists may or may not believe in the words of Genesis 3, but they know the burdens of work — even and especially delightful work — very well... 

... a community of people that work side by side, motivated by delight and wonder, characterized by intellectual humility and a willingness to admit they have been wrong and change direction, who together help one another bear the frustrations of work in a fallen world . . . does this sound like something the church ought to celebrate? Or perhaps even emulate? 

As with so many professional callings, I have found that science makes such demands on its practitioners that those who succeed in it tend to be either strikingly mature and wise persons, or sadly foolish and stunted — with relatively few in the middle. The stakes in a scientific vocation are high.

This article is part of an excellent series: What I wish my Pastor knew about science...

I thank Luke Glanville for bringing the article to my attention.