Certainly I'm generalizing, but the issue here isn't the sociology that you're pointing to, but the methodology. I'm generalizing about basic scientific methods, not about individual scientists.

I agree that scientists want to understand things, since everyone does. I'd go as far as to concede that lots of scientists do understand things. The question at issue is whether that understanding would be based on scientific methods. I suspect, rather, that those scientists would be philosophizing, in effect, reading between the lines of their scientific work, leaping to conclusions in visionary ways that suit their intuitions.

The question I'm raising in this series (which is almost over, by the way, for now) is epistemological. What is it to understand things? Is there a difference between mapping or formalizing and understanding? How does science fit into epistemology? You're sort of changing the topic by going into sociology, although I'm sure you're right about how scientists are funneled into certain research paths. I think this misses the point I was trying to get at, though.