Nothing new, or everything new? How to do theory (or rather, how *I* do theory)

When I began doing theoretical evolutionary biology as my main thing (May 1994); I realized that there were two apparently opposed ways of looking at any problem. 

One was that everything had already been thought and said, and the best way of solving a problem was wide and deep engagement with the already-published literature. So; the way to tackle a problem was to read everything about it, speak to anyone who might know anything relevant - then extract from this "the answer". 

This could be called the scholarly approach. 

The other was that anything I personally might have to say about the problem was new; because my personal background, experience and abilities were unique. If this is right; the way to tackle a problem is to think hard and long about it, and work it out from myself. 

This could be called the philosophical approach. 

(Somebody once said that Heidegger and Wittgenstein represented these extremes within the academic discipline of philosophy: Heidegger had read "everything", Wittgenstein had read "nothing".) 

Of course, these two ways are not separate; but opposite ends of a scale. Nothing worthwhile could emerge from a pure version of either extreme. 

A scholar who did not think was just a stamp collector, a compiler and filer (or an "AI"!). A thinker who did not know the relevant stuff was never going to solve any particular problem. 

But it was obvious that - if I wanted to get anywhere real, then I was motivated and suited to the philosophical approach. That is: mostly-thinking, rather than mostly-studying.  

By this time I was in my middle thirties and had already done a great deal of studying across a wide range of medical, psychological and biological areas - so I knew plenty of stuff; and this would be relevant stuff... so long as I was working on the right kind of problems. 

Anyway, this is what I did. 

Plus an idea I got from Francis Crick, which was that almost everything published on a topic is wrong: the "trick" is to work only using that which is right. 

So; I did my theorizing on the basis - from the basis - of relatively few highly selected facts and assumptions that I judged to be true and of good provenance; produced by honest, relevantly informed and competent persons. 

And ignoring nearly everything else, because I regarded it as wrong wrong for any reason - incompetent, based on false assumptions, dishonest, of dubious provenance etc.  i.e. nearly everything.)  

When I became a Christian, after a couple of years of increasing torment in which I tried to be obedient to the church-consensus - when there was no consensus, or else an obviously-wrong consensus - I progressively re-adopted the same attitude and approach that I had used in theoretical science. 

Which - no doubt - explains a lot...