"Although reading the classics in Latin in school may be not as fulfilling as it would be at a more mature age, few scientists can afford the time for such diversion later in life"
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Olah slips a quiet lament into what sounds like pragmatic career advice: the humanities get framed as a luxury good, and science as a jealous employer. The line is built on a double concession. First, he admits the teenage grind of translating Latin can feel sterile, performed for grades rather than pleasure. Then he turns that complaint inside out: the very period when it seems least “fulfilling” may be the only window you’ll ever get.
The subtext is less about Latin than about time, and about how a scientific life narrows your available attention. “Diversion” is doing a lot of work here. It’s modest, almost self-deprecating, as if reading Virgil were a guilty pleasure rather than intellectual training. That understatement is the point: Olah is signaling how even cultured scientists internalize the idea that anything not immediately productive is indulgent. The sentence mourns the trade without sentimentalizing it.
Context matters because Olah isn’t a columnist romanticizing old-school education; he’s a working scientist who knows what professional ambition does to the calendar. Coming from a Nobel-winning chemist, the remark also reads like a defense of breadth from inside a specialization machine. You can hear a belief that scientific creativity benefits from noninstrumental study, but you can also hear resignation: later, the lab, the grants, the competition, the pressure to keep publishing will crowd it out.
It’s a small, pointed argument for front-loading the soul. Not because youth is ideal for classics, but because adulthood rarely grants permission.
The subtext is less about Latin than about time, and about how a scientific life narrows your available attention. “Diversion” is doing a lot of work here. It’s modest, almost self-deprecating, as if reading Virgil were a guilty pleasure rather than intellectual training. That understatement is the point: Olah is signaling how even cultured scientists internalize the idea that anything not immediately productive is indulgent. The sentence mourns the trade without sentimentalizing it.
Context matters because Olah isn’t a columnist romanticizing old-school education; he’s a working scientist who knows what professional ambition does to the calendar. Coming from a Nobel-winning chemist, the remark also reads like a defense of breadth from inside a specialization machine. You can hear a belief that scientific creativity benefits from noninstrumental study, but you can also hear resignation: later, the lab, the grants, the competition, the pressure to keep publishing will crowd it out.
It’s a small, pointed argument for front-loading the soul. Not because youth is ideal for classics, but because adulthood rarely grants permission.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
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