This is quite obviously a metaphor. He's talking about lone wolves without the habit of seeking collaboration. From the same source further down, regarding br

This is quite obviously a metaphor. He's talking about lone wolves without the habit of seeking collaboration. From the same source further down, regarding brainstorming: There were a group of other people I used to talk with. For example there was Ed Gilbert; I used to go down to his office regularly and ask him questions and listen and come back stimulated. [...] Yes, I find it necessary to talk to people. I think people with closed doors fail to do this so they fail to get their ideas sharpened, such as ``Did you ever notice something over here?'' I never knew anything about it - I can go over and look. Somebody points the way. On my visit here, I have already found several books that I must read when I get home. I talk to people and ask questions when I think they can answer me and give me clues that I do not know about. I go out and look! And he's speaking from a time before ubiquitous email and online chat. Do you really imagine that the solitude-seekers' problem is that they want to avoid collaboration? Do you imagine that forcing them into the mind-blender type of office eight hours every day of the week is necessary because we need to make them collaborate more, to make sure they know the right things to work on?