February 9, 2006

Philosophically speaking

A couple of great posts over at ScienceBlogs about how a couple of history/philosophy of science scholars started out on pure science careers but then switched over to the other side.

The first is by Janet D. Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science, Changing career paths, about her transition from a chemist to a philosopher. A follow-up post with more details is here.

The second is by John Lynch at Stranger Fruit, What a long strange trip ..., about his transition from biology to history.

Interestingly, neither of them has made much of a buzz in the blogosphere that I can tell from Technorati. You often hear about scientists who have made the transition to novelist or artist or whatever, and these are just two more examples of how the training scientists get can be useful in other fields of endeavor (or perhaps something else ;-). It would also be interesting to hear of cases where people start careers in the arts, humanities or social sciences and end up in science or technical careers -- there must be quite a few former artists who make their living as web developers, for example.

Any bloggers out there reading this who have made similar career transitions? I'd be happy to link to posts about your experiences!

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