Mentoring - Is There Too Much Pettiness in Mentoring?

There's a culture in evolutionary biology of not paying attention to mechanism. I've always been fascinated by mechanism even as I'm fascinated by function and behavior. In trying to convey this idea to Dick the mechanism part was making it impossible. Over the course of a year I convinced him that it made sense but it's a very special mentor who is capable of straddling that gap most mentors would just sort of not take responsibility for saying one way or the other.