Interesting books and writings
"How to build an economic model in your spare time" by Hal Varian. My favourite quote from this article: (a good way to build a model is) —simplify to get the result, complexify to see how general it is
Herbert Simon's autobiography "Models of my life". The book discusses how his career spans from political science to psychology, economics and computer science. And also how he built the Tepper school of CMU.
Some interesting quotes from this book: 1) Best is the enemy of good 2) start with something then problems will emerge 3) a picture is worth a thousand words (he has written a lot on using diagrams, for example here) 4)If (someone) want to win get into something that have a long odds of winning 5) do work that you have a secret weapon and play it fair 6) Do significant and solvable work. Most importantly 7) make friends and stay with them !
Here's another article by Simon that discusses the struggles of scholars in public administration. I can really resonate with this as I've been working at interdisciplinary departments as well.
"The structure of scientific revolution" by Thomas S. Kuhn. The author thinks there are three types of science (and scientists): paradigm setting, normal science (as puzzle solver) and scientific revolution emerged from anomaly in normal science. This framework seems to fit pretty well with the emergence of behavioral economics.