For this post, I'm going to completely change gears. I've been writing on the Chemistry and Technology of Flavors and Fragrances, but earlier this week I read about a hundred pages from a very different kind of text: The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing. This book is a collection of extracts, articles, criticisms, poetry, and more from well-known scientists of the twentieth century (everyone from Albert Einstein to Primo Levi), seamed flawlessly together by its editor, Richard Dawkins.
When I finished the last chapter I read ("Who Scientists Are"), and carefully slipped the book back into my bag it felt like one of those moments up to which my whole life has been leading. I've spent a lot of time with my face pressed against textbooks, hoping the knowledge would sort of find its way from the pages through an unknown channel of skin and cell membranes and nerves channels, eventually sticking itself into my memory. I've spent a lot of time wondering why I chose to major in chemistry. What I'm going to do with it, if anything. What I was thinking, if it's worth the stress. If my math skills will inhibit me. If my dreams, as they often have been, will always be bigger than the operating budget and more time-consuming than I can afford.
That said, I've been granted more than my fair share of opportunities. But I've suffered from what I imagine to be a fairly common disillusion about studying science: the idea that learning the secrets of life will be all fireworks and miraculous, Nobel-prize winning discoveries when in reality it takes patience, failure, and compromise. Even though when I set off I knew it would be a difficult path to follow, I didn't comprehend the gaps in knowledge that would cut me off at every turn and have me confused, turned around and frustratingly rummaging in the woods. It seems that after almost three-and-a-half years of studying the subject, I remain hopelessly clueless about it.
Then, there's the whole other branch of that inner argument I mentioned above: I love art in general and poetry in particular. Can those worlds really mesh or will pursuing one inevitably draw me further and further away from the other? Is it a fantasy to think I can do both well?
Here in this book though, the highlighted scientists have an incredible faith in curiosity and the imagination. Many of them - including a number of actual Nobel-prize winners - reflect on their personal difficulties in certain subject areas, their doubts, resource limitations, judgements from others, and more than anything gratitude for what they consider simple good luck (see page 195, Maitland Edey and Donald Johanson's reflection on a chance finding of Lucy in Ethiopia and on page 229 where there's a quote from James Watson, "All through my undergraduate days, I worried that my limited mathematical talents might keep me from being more than a naturalist….there seemed no choice but to tackle my weakness head-on….[math] soon became rather satisfying, even in the age of slide-rules, instead of a source of crippling anxiety").
They have much to say about art. Many of those featured are themselves artists: poetry, short stories, music. Carl Sagan, who I personally admire, wrote spectacular prose (it might make me tear up a little every time I read some). Dawkins says in his introduction to an excerpt from The Demon-Haunted World "open any one of [Sagan's] books and you need go no further than the Table of Contents to experience the tingling of the poetic nerve endings that will continue throughout the book" (239). Just pages before this, before a poem written by Julian Huxley, Dawkins remarks, "I have long thought that science should inspire great poetry, but scientists have published disappointingly few poems" (234).
There are too many great excerpts in this chapter on "Who Scientists Are" to summarize them all, but I figured I could make an attempt to concentrate this book, which is kind of a summary itself, into some of my favorite lines (the most heavily underlined, numerously starred, exclamation point-adorned sentences). One quotation from each of the extracts in this chapter will be listed below. They're words that inspire me, say something I think is really profound, and/or exemplify the kind of person I think I could be (in addition to being quotations able to stand outside the context).
No, I didn't include the authors or the works from which these quotes are specifically excerpted. But as I said, I hope they stand on their own and I hope anyone who reads them says, "wow this book sounds amazing I'm going to go read it." As I prepare to go out "into the real world" with a background in chemistry, a passion for art, and many doubts I can't imagine something better to draw from than a book that, to me, seems like the purpose and justification of science, distilled.
(Page number: "quote.")
156: "Generosity and imagination were, for once, awarded in full. This is a story of human virtue."
161: "How could one seriously believe that the electron really cared about my calculation, one way or the other? And yet the experiments at Columbia showed that it did care…Why it is so, why the electron pays attention to our mathematics, is a mystery that even Einstein could not fathom."
167: "I think we believe that whenever we see an opportunity, we have the duty to work for the growth of that international community of knowledge and understanding…with our colleagues in other lands, with our colleagues in competing, antagonistic, possibly hostile lands…"
171: "She pursued her crystallographic studies, not for the sake of honors, but because this is what she liked to do….at scientific meetings she would seem lost in a dream, until she suddenly came out with some penetrating remark, usually made in a diffident tone of voice, and followed by a little laugh, as if wanting to excuse herself for having put everyone else to shame."
178: "But more incisive than the question, What right have we to form inductions? is the question, How do we form them? [David] Hume gave no explanation of this except habit."
183: "People who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief."
189: "There is poetry in genetics which is more difficult to discern in broken bones, and genes are the only unbroken living thread that weaves back and forth through all those boneyards…it is easy to forget that human fossils remained virtually unnoticed until Darwin."
192: "'It just looked interesting.'" (An archeologist's comment on how he picked the nondescript gully wherein the first Homo erectus fossil was found)
196: "I felt a strong subconscious urge….I am superstitious." (Another archeologist, remarking on the morning of the expedition when the skeleton of Lucy was unearthed)
206: "We who lack an appreciation of history have so little feel for the aggregated importance of small but continuous change scarcely realize that the very ground is being swept from beneath our feet; it is alive and constantly churning."
214: "Suddenly - and how exciting it is when it happens - something will go right and give one a flash of insight into how things work."
219: "There seemed to me an integrity, an essential goodness, about a life in science, a lifelong love affair. I had never given much thought to what I might be when I was 'grown up' - growing up was hardly imaginable - but now I knew: I wanted to be a chemist."
225: "We are coded differently [than social insects], not just for binary choices, go or no-go. We can go four ways at once, depending on how the air feels: go, no-go, but also maybe, plus what the hell let's give it a try. We are in for one surprise after another if we keep at it and keep alive. We can build structures for human society never seen before, thoughts never thought before, music never heard before."
227: "Much better to be the least accomplished chemist in a super chemistry department than the superstar in a less lustrous department."
231: "He gazed at the model, slightly bleary-eyed. All he could manage to say was 'It's beautiful, you see, so beautiful!' But then, of course, it was."
233: "Science often explains the familiar in terms of the unfamiliar." (which is often exactly what poetry does)
237: "In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this [cosmic religious] feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it."
And finally,
243: "When we shy away from it because it seems too difficult, we surrender the ability to take charge of our future."
On a final note, I started wondering after reading this chapter: at what point can I say that I'm a scientist? Now, I admit that's kind of a fluffy philosophical question. But I was thinking - and maybe this is a product of reading too much Sagan - are we all born scientists, curious about the world and eager to investigate? There's a lot of discussion out there about interest in science waning significantly during adolescence due to poor teaching, peer pressure, and perceived difficulty.
Is the question that should be asked, "at what point is one no longer a scientist?" if the chosen path leads elsewhere? Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't have a segment in this book but said once - and it's one of my favorite quotations of all time - "In whatever you choose to do, do it because it's hard."
These are the kinds of things I want to keep in mind when taking a terrifying step in life whether that's starting a job, or moving to a new place, or leaving this beautiful little brick bubble.
Ashley
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