Excellence In Leadership

Start collecting the fruits of your endeavors as you draw lessons from the problems set before you by the retrograde appearance of a flat conservatism that condemns the world to stagnation.

The Saint-Claire Deville experimenter discovered one of the most interesting physicochemical phenomena: the phenomenon of dissociation of combinations under the influence of heat. It determines the conditions of this phenomenon. Facts, as many facts as possible, should be gathered, researched, compared, to draw more and more general conclusions. Only in this way can we come to understand the interdependence of chemical phenomena. The experimental facts highlighted by the pilgrimage of Deville’s students and hundreds of other experimenters have confirmed the general lines of Deville’s performance. The relevancy of Deville’s words is always alive to those who deal with theory and scientific practice.

The research of the phenomenon discovered by the great scientist has not ceased in fact, not even today. Each of this master’s experiences has opened the way for new industrial applications. All of Saint-Claire Deville’s researcher activity gives us the image of experience as the source of theory, of experience as the source of industrial applications.

In order to highlight the dissociation products, he imagines the system of hot-cold concentric tubes, through which he can suddenly cool the dissociation products, so that they no longer have recombination conditions. He imagines systems for extracting reaction products. It analyzes, with the most accurate methods of the epoch, the produced gases. Repeats multiple times each operation and scores the results of the analysis in the tables. In describing his experiences, he does not omit any significant detail. Quantities are rigorously recorded. No secondary phenomenon is omitted. Failures are presented, together with the interpretation of their causes.

Leadership: Are you willing to put all your creative work in a position of researcher so you can use the image of your experience as the source of new discoveries without knowing the true value of what you are experiencing?

Claire Deville was one to be feared. The clarity of his exposures transforms experimental chemistry lessons into active propaganda for science. Not only chemists and doctors, but also literary men, and intellectuals of all sorts gathered around this master of experience at so-called Sunday meetings at Ecole Normale. Deville sent the passion for experimental research far beyond the walls of the laboratory.

But the destiny of scholars often drowns in the drama of the profound sense of abandonment and betrayal, felt by a society where morals and material interests reject the benefits of science in the evolution of humanity.

On one of the days of 1881, the corpse of Saint-Claire Deville was found in Seine’s waters. Overwhelmed by work, overcome by the problem of aluminum, living in the midst of a moral society to which no cherished appreciation and gratitude for his talents, Deville sank, like so many others, into the waters of despair.

Leadership: Can you build a superior judgment to any other considerations of a particular or general-human nature, relying solely on intensive work with the self in an honest search for a hero who wants to become immortal?

Oftentimes, a bitter life is manifested by trying to bring science to idealistic spheres, over the realities that dominate the world, away from the needs and concerns that bind the masses and stimulate the expansion of the most detestable morals.

Almost all scientists have had limitless moments on their way to achieving a grandiose destiny by becoming aware of a lack of sense in the category of “what keeps my happiness permanently active”, where the purpose of striving to fight the fear of the trivial passage through this life gains the contour of a promethean ambition to remodel humanity.

The human dimension continues to remain the weakness of practicing impassiveness, an egoistic defense of momentary interests, of excessive material worry, without really reflecting on the evolution of the world. At present, any scientist is, above all, a fighter against the clichés of a standardized existence between the supermarket and entertainment, being willing to suspend the need to get in touch with the other members of the community, precisely in order not to enter the same group with them.

That is why we could approach leadership in a particular situation that could intervene along the implementation period of a new investigation in the infrastructure of personal value, as a way to efficiently explore a new dimension of scientific discoveries, grounded on the "total sacrifice". This seems, as a matter of fact, the sine qua non requirement of progress and of changing professional frustrations, even though some necessities – at least the practical ones – become unavoidable.

But how far can they reach and what form can these unavoidable needs arise in the process of elaborating the scientific theories of personality? In this regard, we would be tempted to venture into an honest search for a hero who wishes to become immortal through the very example of his belief in the immense achievements of science in the service of the world.

Immortality is what remains in the memory of the world as the inheritance of a profound experimental knowledge, after you have given your consent as the hand of a historical destiny to choose for you the price of greatness.

As far as science is concerned, perhaps we should all start looking for a faith motivated by the wisdom of a characteristic of the soul, to overlook all the injustices of an increasingly chaotic world, which (for the moment) only values the ephemeral nature of life. Marcus Aurelius helps us with some advice in this regard:

“When another criticizes or hates you, when people manifest to you these feelings, turn to their souls, enter inside them and see what kind of people they are. You will see that you do not have to worry for them to make an opinion about you at some point.

Yet you have to be gracious to them, for according to nature they are friends. And the gods help them in many ways, through dreams, through predictions, that they get the things for which they put in so much effort.”

But a few stones are never enough to build an entire stable scaffold. The leader will never be able to build a correct reason resting only upon intensive work with the self. He will never be able to support certain suppositions counting only on his self-observation ability. In this case, he can count only on prejudices, forcing certain misunderstandings. And strengthen his belief in an absolute and permanent reality that depends on many variable factors. But a reality that does not resemble the pursuit of a pleasure meant to cover a lack, a void, a suffering.

A physical size which interferes in a process or phenomenon needs to be defined through a series of mandatory elements so that it is perfectly determined. In leadership, in order for me to bring your science towards a realist and deep point of view, you have to permanently restart and consolidate the optimization process for the level of understanding human dimension towards an effect constant which gives the possibility to strengthen your defining qualities.

In order to learn the hardships and competencies needed for leadership, you must assume awareness of a lack of meaning attributed to your scientific efforts, by trial-failure experiences that can at any time cancel out your credibility to other people.

Excellency In Leadership is achieved through a self-sacrifice attributed to a law of the inevitable destiny, which no human opposition can change: everything you do has an echo in the immortality of a star that illuminates through the light of the spirit.

* Note: Solomon, Max - Lights in the Retort , Scientific Publishing House Bucharest, 1962.