I asked him about this, but since it's more than a year since I studied the thing, I couldn't explain it nearly well enough. He had written a paper about the kind of method I had scetched, but it had apparently been already invented. Neither of us remembered the original details in my plan.
Faster methods have apparently been found during this time, and his interest has moved to them. He remembers I had suggested the method, which seemed promising at the time, but his emphasis was on the point that my method alone wasn't enough to make it work. So, filling in much obvious stuff, and one non-obvious addition, he wanted to make the distinction that my model didn't work, but his did.
That's a peculiar way of expressing that I defined the most important parts, but not everything.
So, some kind of defensive thing going on there. "It's my creation now, I added this thing to it". Well, no worries. He remembered! I'm also happy for having created something he feels like wanting to own, and that he knows it.
Sad that it wasn't as novel a finding as I had thought.
I'd work with him, provided he didn't take the results of collaborative work out of our team without consulting me. We wouldn't be the best partners, perhaps, okay maybe. There's disparity. He knows much more methods than I do, and how to execute them, but he suffers from "not invented here" syndrome, is protective of ideas, and other stuff. For some strange reason, he seems very consensus-driven in his approach. Very inside-the-box thinking. Having learned a lot he doesn't believe in being able to create original ideas. "If it were any good, it must have been invented elsewhere" is his mantra to most everything, most especially his own ideas.
I don't understand the big role history plays in his mind. If something hasn't been done already, it probably can't be done, he thinks. If something has been done, it can't be invented again, but it must be applied to something the original inventor thought of. Just the way like it was ment to be used. I'm surprised how much he's so much of an follower in science, too, even though he's good. I mean, socially he's much of an follower, too.
I'm surprised. I thought he'd be eager to do something first, to invent stuff. He's really more in for the application, with much less original thinking than I thought of. I guess he likes the ease of proving some research results in where the general method have been already proven.
I can kind of understand that. If someone creates a website, a commercial product or something like that, he can be as inventive or uninventive as he wishes, and it doesn't need to be proven to anyone. Customers use it, or customers don't use it. In his circles, things have to be proven to death, and as he's not very good convincing anyone or getting partners, he goes for the things others would be ready to accept. Which is, application of already invented things.
I think I'm getting a full picture here.