You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
of an apt explanation—even when dealing with the academic community.<br />
Mathematical Career<br />
The work that made Bowditch famous was The New American Practical Navigator (read here), an<br />
1800s equivalent of "Navigation for Dummies." Bowditch didn't purposely set out to write it; at<br />
first, he was just concerned with fixing the mistakes in the navigation tables featured in a previously<br />
published book written by another author. Such mistakes caused shipwrecks and cost sailors their<br />
lives. After trying to find and fix all the errors in the other author's book (he found no less than<br />
8,000 mistakes), Bowditch finally gave up and recomputed all the tables from scratch. He then<br />
added simple, user-friendly explanations of navigational principles; new and improved calculation<br />
methods; a dictionary of nautical terms; and an introduction to trigonometry—all with an emphasis<br />
on practical examples and techniques. The book quickly became the #1 reference text of its kind<br />
and the book for seamen. In fact, when Bowditch died, the ships in several ports—both American<br />
and international—dropped to their flags to half mast in honor of his passing. (Even today, a much<br />
revised version of The New American Practical Navigator is carried on U.S. naval vessels; the book<br />
is colloquially referred to as "Bowditch" rather than by its title.)<br />
There is a point of interest here when you consider the amount of work it took Bowditch to<br />
calculate each and every number in the tables by hand. INTJs are the most perfectionistic and<br />
meticulous of the Rationals; 158 associated with this trait is the fact that Bowditch was able to<br />
perform the task with such painstaking accuracy. And this accuracy had to be maintained on an<br />
enormous scale. As his son put it, "The amount of labor requisite for insuring accuracy in the<br />
tables, by actually going through all the calculations necessary to a complete examination of them,<br />
was immense beyond conception." This is a pattern we see repeated over and over in his life.<br />
In his scientific efforts, for instance, Bowditch was very meticulous. He calculated the mass,<br />
velocity and height of a meteor that exploded over Western Connecticut, and it is recorded that his<br />
calculations relied upon "numerous observations collected with great labor and assiduity." He<br />
studied the orbit of a comet in similar detail. This study required "one hundred and forty-four pages<br />
of close figures, probably exceeding one million in number..." And on another occasions, he<br />
studied the variation of a magnetic needle using five thousand, one hundred and twenty-five<br />
observations carried out over the course of four years. He exhibited this ability to deal with<br />
exactingly precise yet overwhelmingly lengthy tasks even in his youth. At age fourteen, he made an<br />
"accurate and minutely finished" Almanac that was good enough to be published.<br />
It is sometimes the case in science that a breakthrough can only be achieved through a<br />
hyperaccurate, mentally demanding "brute force" approach. Of course one would like to use a<br />
computer or crowdsourcing for this, but it is not always possible. In these cases, it is the INTJ who<br />
is the type most likely to make it through all fifty thousand datapoints and achieve closure at the<br />
end. This is a unique niche that no other type, save perhaps only the ISTJs, can fill.<br />
There is a bit of a terminology problem when you try to describe this phenomenon using MBTI<br />
terms. Intuitives are not "detail oriented" but "global." So what do we call it when INTJs pay close<br />
attention to minutia at length? And what do we make of the following statement: "Devoted to the<br />
loftiest speculations, he [Bowditch] was not neglectful of the most trifling and minute duty"?<br />
Thorne and Gough's 1991 adjective survey found that observers described male INTJs as being<br />
"methodical," "painstaking," and "thorough." Female INTJs were likewise described as being<br />
"precise," "methodical" and "thorough." As you'll recall, Bowditch wasn't interested in the daily<br />
duties of seamanship. What he wanted was new, challenging conceptual problems. INTJs can and<br />
158 Thorne & Gough, 1991
Change language