Atoms, particles, space, time, memory...ahahh. All the ideas that I tend to wonder. The idea that there was a 'beginning' and will be an end I always tended to think was man's ego.....and still do. It seems to me that if I just happened to be apart of the pretty neat thing called life, which started and will not last forever than I must be quite special. However, I tend to lean towards the idea that atoms, energy, whatever you want to insert, was always here in some form or another and slowly or quickly morphing into other forms. What is neat is that this is happening right now, parts of me are leaving me become other forms while particles all around me around interacting with me! So really what are we, do we really exist? (Just kidding :)Kind of mind blowing though.
Martin Rees, in his article "Just Six Numbers", talks about how vastness of the universe tends to make people feel insignificant yet it is quite the contrary since if it wasn't for all the happenings coming together exactly how it did then we would not be here. Although I have not always agreed with this idea I definitely has evolved to believing in it. It isn't chaos, there is a contrived order of operations that is happening based on electrons and protons which is quite magnificent.
It does seem quite easy to think of how vast the world is and to feel so small in comparison. But when did looking at a whole and comparing it to one of its part become fair?! Obviously, we are a piece of it all-- but how amazing that it is so.
The idea that Atkins talks about in his article, "Creation Revisited", that the deep structure of change is decay beautiful. The whole death-rebirth-death-rebirth cycle, or as Maynard puts it "life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life"...you get the point. More so that change happens because of the quality of energy not the quantity is deeper than I have accounted for yet.
I have thought solely as change simply being a dispersal of energy that happens based on it's quantity changing.
"We, however, can see that achieving being there should not be confused with choosing to go there." (Atkins) As the observer (of life) I often wonder how things came to be. I want to understand why the atoms or created matter chose to come together, by recognizing that achieving and choosing are separate (which many sessions of yoga has been trying to teach me) it allows a different idea and acceptance to surface.
Quite often science is regarded as truth, while science writing is the ability to persuade that truth. This isn't to sum up all science writers with need to persuade an audience to believe, rather the ability of using words to correctly portray a meaning, of a specific science (that at times may be quite obscure for the reader), to the audience. Gross says that the 'brute facts' mean nothing, only statements have meaning. The observed vs the observer. So science means nothing until the observer (humans) make meaning from it. Again the persuasion is through the idea of representing, abstracting, and communicating the facts, which otherwise would mean nothing.
If we consider the fact that the observer has a biased lens, and through this lens reciprocates a persuaded rhetorical response, then science could be considered persuasion. Which is kind of scary to think of.
When I think of science, I know that it isn't absolute but constantly evolving. In a perfect world I hope science to be observed and studied but the scientist without subjection, but we know that is nearly impossible. Yet, the reality is that the information is looked through at a subjective view inevitably creating persuasion of the view. People believe in what they 'see'.
Is metaphor the foundation of action? I wouldn't necessarily say that metaphor creates action, rather metaphor creates an understanding that relates action. It allows people to understand and relate to experience and knowledge.
Major SIDE NOTE: Rick Bass came to speak at MSU and in response to a question stated that writers should leave our symbols instead using metaphors. I took from his explanation that symbols tie down a specific meaning which doesn't allow the reader to deduce his/her own understanding by relating to the writing. Metaphors, however, do allow the reader to relate. When writing fiction this definitely makes sense. I don't know exactly how I feel when applying this method to science writing, but it is QUITE interesting to think about!
Back to metaphor as a foundation of action, I just can't seem to agree. The action comes first and then the metaphor follows. The metaphor would not be there if people weren't trying to relate through 'different lens's'. Metaphor is a tool for communication. Can it also be considered a tool for action? Maybe in some far reaching way, as in the action was provoked by the metaphor which was used to give understanding. But again, the metaphor was a tool for understanding that which was already there allowing the action to be given by the 'now' understood message (that the metaphor was relating). WORDY? Whoops- hopefully you get the idea. But maybe I am just getting hung up on the idea of action. Metaphor creates action because it provokes understanding!
"Whatever be the subject of a speech, therefore, in whatever art or branch of science, the orator, if he has made himself master of it, as of his client's cause, will speak on it better and more elegantly than even the very originator and author of it can." "Cicero, 1970, p.19)
I have held onto a memory for the last eleven years, involving this very thought. Denise, a former lead psychologist for a Church of Scientology, once told me that you can tell your husband to 'fuck off' in two very different ways, with two very different results depending on the tone of the words spoken. If spoken angrily it may result quite (sometimes) fatal. However, if there is a tinge of sarcasm, or endearment rather, it will be brushed off without such terrible consequences. She expressed that the tone is crucial in communication and that if you feel you 'need' to 'say' something just focus on the tone.
This memory always makes me laugh- and I wish I could do justice to her two very different examples of telling someone "fuck you!" However, I may have found something to give just a little idea: Below is a video on multiple ways to say "Excuse me". (Don't mind the cheesy music... well it's overall kind of cheeZy- but it's good anyway :D)
Jeanne Fahnestock provides great examples in Accommodating Science of multiple ways to write the same information for different audiences.
"This sex difference in the LH response to a neuroendocrine challens is a critical feature in any evaluation of hormone responsiveness and sexual orientation: to our knowledge, this is the first simultaneous direct comparison of heterosexual and homosexual men with heterosexual women."
"Some homosexual men have been shown for the first time to differ from heterosexual men in the way they respond to hormones."
After reading the first quote, I -- in no way-- deciphered that which is stated in the second quote. While writing my first science news brief (in class) I chose a 24 page research paper posted by the scientists. I spent hours trying to understand their jargon. With a fear of relaying wrong information, by misunderstanding their words.
This makes me wonder, is there such thing as no personal writing? Before I have suspected, that even the scientists bring a subjective viewpoint regardless of exhausted effort to not. However, there is definitely a Large grey area that may actually hold a spot for a 'nearly close to no subjectivity- especially in writing-. So the scientist may be observing subjectively- but they are writing in a way that involves straight facts through a language that most people don't understand.
If we all speak the same language- than why do we not understand each other all the time. There is an obvious 'layman's' way (in which the writer hopes to portray for the common reader). Yet, there is an objective jargon that most people other than the scientist don't understand. I guess, what I'm trying to say is that the 'personal writing' or 'human element' that we talk so often about is that language which is universal and understood. And that there IS a language out there regardless of it being 'English' that we don't understand- the objective- unless we have studied it.
SIDE NOTE: "Anyone who has ever tried to present a rather abstract scientific subject in a popular manner knows the great difficulties of such an attempt. Either he succeeds in being intelligible by concealing the core of the problem and by offering to the reader only superficial aspects or vague allusions, thus deceiving the reader by arousing in him the deceptive illusion of comprehension; or else he gives an expert account of the problem, but in such a fashion that the untrained reader is unable to follow the exposition and becomes discouraged from reading any further. If these two categories are omitted from today's popular scientific literature, surprisingly little remains." Albert Einstein
All I can Say, regardless of the growth that has happened in this field since Einstein said this: I feel a bit better, knowing the difficulties I am experiencing is recognized by Einstein himself! Although I don't know if I feel that there is now HOPE or that I am even more HOPELESS.... probably the latter. (Just not as discouraged :)
