Hedgehogs and foxes

Freeman Dyson, writing about Richard Feynman in the current issue of the New York Review of Books opens with this paragraph:

Great scientists come in two varieties, which Isiah Berlin, quoting the seventh-century-BC poet Archilochus, called hedgehogs and foxes. Foxes know many tricks, hedgehogs only one. Hedgehogs are interested only in a few problems which they consider fundamental, and stick with the same problems for years or decades. Most of the great discoveries are made by hedgehogs, most of the little discoveries by foxes. Science needs both hedgehogs and foxes for its healthy growth, hedgehogs to dig deep into the nature of things, foxes to explore the complicated details of our marvelous universe. Albert Einstein was a hedgehog; Richard Feynman was a fox.

Well, I’m not a scientist, but I’m definitely a fox.