“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
~ Stephen King, On Writing, pg. 125
My plan going into this blog was to tell a story by using the tips I learned in Chapter 4 of the Field guide (which were all really interesting and helpful by the way), but now as I’ve dug into this post, I’m not really inspired to do that right now. However, I’ll try to at least insert my personality into it.
Beyond the field guide chapter, I noticed that the other three readings (Carl Sagan, Chandrasekhar & Wolpert) include a type of narrative voice that sort of go along with the tips that Field Guide provided for us. For example, I liked Carl Sagan’s metaphor usage “siren song of unreason” when he described the probable societal attraction to psuedoscience. It definitely spiced up the reading for me and it has helped me to see how I can add a little flavor to my News Brief. On a semi unrelated note, I really liked Wolpert’s piece about explaining the familiar in terms of the unfamiliar. It made me think of how in these News Briefs we could explain our topics in a similar fashion to help paint a picture for our readers.
Let me jump back to Carl Sagan:
When I read that “science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It’s just the best we have (241),” it made me think of a concept that I just learned in my research methods class for psychology. We talked about the idea of “constructs.” In psychology, constructs are concepts that are not directly observable and thus cannot be measured without being precisely defined. For example love, motivation and creativity are examples of constructs. If we’re looking for a way to measure “aggression” (which is another construct) we could define it as an action that is intentionally harmful, but what exactly does “intentional” mean?
Does either character in the following video demonstrate aggression based on "intentionality"?
How do we know when someone intends to do something? In the video, it may look like Tom and Jerry were purposely trying to hurt each other, but we don't know the full context of the situation. Perhaps to make the definition of aggression clearer, we could measure “aggression” by asking a person how spiteful they feel toward another person/object based on a scale of 1 to 10.
To put this into context of this class, we don’t know exactly what we’re measuring, but in order to keep everyone on the same page, we have to define it somehow. Definitions are the key to happiness and understanding across different disciplines because we all see things according to the culture/group of people that we’re trained to think as. For example, how a psychologist views “research” is perhaps different than how a biologist or a high school student views research. If you throw a topic at each of them and ask them to “research” it, they may respond differently based on what they know within their discipline.
I also loved this quote on page 241, “The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” This makes me think about faith. I believe Sadie touched on this in a previous blog post. I feel like we put faith into everything we read, do and say. In my psychology class we’re learning to be skeptical (not cynical) of research and to question authority figures such as professors. In science we put faith that certain research methods will probably yield certain results (and is meaningful somehow) just as we put faith into quotes, God, the words of our parents/friends, the shows we watch, the books we read etc. without any promise for the personal meanings they give us. For example, I have faith that my future will be filled with happiness, but there are no guarantees that my future will be happy. Faith is all I can hold on to.
Chandrasekhar said that beauty is what our minds reach for. It’s beautiful to us if we try to discover it.
This makes me think about all the things I enjoy: language, rhetoric, kitties, psychology, 80s music ….
Before I declared as a Writing major, I wanted to learn more about writing and after I declared and took WRIT 205 last year, I wanted to learn more about rhetoric. Rhetoric was like this gigantic unknown topic that I didn’t understand but I wanted to understand. I still want to understand it, and I’m happy that I’m slowly putting the pieces together ( – I just wish I had more time to deeply think about it!). Language, culture and reader/writer relationship is so interesting to me, and so I think I’m willing to call this interest “beautiful.” :)
Now I feel like Chandrasekhar’s topic goes back to passion and objectivity that we had discussed earlier this semester. In science we’re not really objective if we love what we’re doing. Sure, we can perform certain experiments to keep out certain types of bias (e.g observer bias) from tainting the results of an experiment, but isn’t there some sort of passion that drives that research? If they’re genuinely curious about a scientific research study and have the patience to pursue it, don’t they have some degree of passion? On a related note, if we don’t have passion for what we’re doing (e.g writing these News briefs), then what’s the point of even doing it? If we’re not on this journey/quest to find the answers to scientific, rhetorical or whatever research because we want to, why are we doing it? If we didn’t want to do something, surely we’d be happier doing something we’d be interested in, right? In other words, I feel that if you love what you’re studying and have interest in it, that passion doesn’t really make you objective and to maintain all objectivity would be to take away what it means to be human.
“…However, I’ll try to at least insert my personality into it.” Kelly, you not only inserted your personality into this post, but you also captivated me from beginning to end. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned Carl Sagan’s statement that, “The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” (By the way, nice way to connect this with an earlier discussion about faith.) I agree with Sagan’s comment on face-value, though not according to his premise. Earlier in the paragraph, Sagan redefined “spiritual” in a way that reduced it to materialism, concluding that “despite usage to the contrary, there is no necessary implication in the word ‘spiritual’ that we are talking of anything other than matter.” According to his line of reasoning, anything we feel as “spiritual” can be explained by nature or whatever is “inside the box.”
“Spirit” does come from the Latin word, “spirare,” meaning “to breathe.” However, “the Latin word translates Greek pneuma and Hebrew ruah” (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=spirit&searchmode=none), which also mean “to breathe” or “breath, wind.” Of course, these words are used to refer to material “breath” and “wind,” but they are also used to refer to the supernatural, such as in the Hebrew Old Testament (“Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit shall not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.’” Genesis 6:3). In fact, the word “inspiration” comes from the same Latin word, “spirare.” Translated from the Greek New Testament, 2 Timothy 3:16 states, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” More contemporary translations replace “God-breathed” with “inspired.” My point is that Sagan may have pre-emptively restricted the definition of “spirit,” thereby affecting his conclusion in the end. Had he accepted the broader definition of the word, he probably would’ve ended his article quite differently…Hehe, how’s that to “mistrust arguments from authority”? I got off on quite the tangent, but thanks for hanging in there with me!
Hi Kelly, I like your ideas about definitions and communicating across different fields. That’s what we’re shooting for in our writing. I really appreciate it when someone attempts to explain a concept from another field in terms that are relatable in his own. Or, better yet, when someone can expertly pull from multiple fields to create a more comprehensive and comprehendible definition. I’ve seen this in a lot of the writing we’ve read thus far (I’m thinking about Oliver Sacks right now, since I just read his article). Someone who can write expertly on ecology, literature, and philosophy (like Timothy Morton http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/) does something to create new ideas in both fields. I think that’s why interdisciplinary scholarship is so highly valued – we reach new understandings by casting wide nets.
ReplyDeleteSince you talk about rhetoric, passion, and exigence at the end of your post, and since I’m on a rhet/comp kick this week, Michael Kleine has a great article entitled “What is it We Do When We Write Articles Like This One – and How Do We Get Students to Join Us?” In it, he talks about studying researchers in a variety of fields at a university (including some of his colleagues in the sciences) and comes to the conclusion that they’re all doing research because they’re passionate about it. It might be worth checking out.
Liam