From imagination to paradigm shift

Mathematician Klemens Fellner on the limits of his ideas as a researcher.

Is your imagination a boundary that you want to manifest or overcome? As a researcher, you try your hand at things that no one has ever understood before. It requires significant effort and the right intuition to grow new ideas and put them on a scientific foundation. How often did I experience that my idea was wonderfully off the mark and even overrun by research, before I was able to improve it?

How do you realize that an idea is a mirage that will never work out? When do you insist on your idea, despite all the doubts and doubters, to be the most patient (and not the most stubborn) to initiate a paradigm shift?

After 25 years as a researcher, I can at least say that you have to imagine your ideas well. Then what you want to manifest will manifest.

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