A World of Pizzazz

According to Annie Dillard, “the creator loves pizzazz” (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 139). In context, the phrase refers to whatever deity Dillard imagines created the physical world. But out of context, I think her words can be used to make another significant point: the creators of text should love pizzazz since the audience is drawn to it.

The synonyms of “pizzazz” include style, glamour, zest, flair, interest, and excitement. But really, I think the word “pizzazz” is highly abstract, depending less on actual definition than the sort of reaction experienced by the hearer/reader. When I hear or read “pizzazz,” I think of oil paintings by Leonid Afremov. One of the most noticeable differences between his paintings and others is the presence of such bright colors—but then again, some other painters also use similar vivid hues. Since I don’t know much about art technique, all I can say is that Afremov’s paintings are set apart because of his…pizzazz.

So how does one write with pizzazz if we can’t even fully describe what it means? Dillard, Hancock, Kunzig, and Shreeve all offer us clues. “Landscape consists in the multiple, overlapping intricacies and forms that exist in a given space at a moment in time. Landscape is the texture of intricacy” states Dillard. Similarly, the “landscape” of our writing is composed of all sorts of textures, or intricate details. This type of texture is exactly what Hancock refers to when she advises writers to “put in all your raisins (i.e., fun facts, great quotes, and interesting comparisons)” (97). The raisins are borrowed glimmers of brilliance; “you may not be able to turn a brilliant phrase yourself, but if you can recognize brilliant material when you see it, you can come close to a brilliant effect” (97). These raisins—borrowed, brilliant quotations, facts, and the like—create part of the texture. And according to Hancock, just as you can’t mess up the texture of bread pudding by adding too many raisins, so also you can’t mess up your writing by adding too much “texture.” Perhaps we may then infer that the “texture” of our writing has something to do with “pizzazz.”

According to Shreve, coupling intricate details with narrative structure is “essential” (140). Details are meant to show rather than to tell. For example, Shreve claims that “Gawande’s cool, unadorned style conveys the horror and intensity of the fire that night much better than if he were to start throwing around words like ‘horror’ and ‘intensity’” (141). Suppose I were a medical student writing about my mother, who inspired me to pursue the medical field. Rather than writing something like “My mom was very passionate about her work and enjoyed it immensely,” I would describe “Even after a full day of long hours at the hospital, I could ask my mom about her patients and still her face would light up; all the weariness seemed to fall off her as she talked about her various clients. She was like a little kid bubbling with all the news of the school day and hardly able to express it in an intelligible manner.” Again, details should show rather than tell; what does an exciting, breaking science discovery look like? “It’s a challenge, but you can construct narratives that are based almost entirely on ideas and how they developed” writes Kunzig (129). We have no excuse—we can use detailed, textural, narrative structure in our science writing for that little bit of “pizzazz” that will cause readers to exclaim, “Gee whiz!” (127).

At any rate, these texts definitely got me thinking about the strange, indescribable quality of “pizzazz” and how I might attain it in my own writing. But at least their suggestions seem especially fitted for a science feature. Perhaps the hardest part is simply opening our eyes and seeing the pizzazz already in the world—then we’d have only to transcribe that pizzazz rather than inscribe it. Dillard appropriately says, “This, then, is the extravagant landscape of the world, given, given with pizzazz” (148).

Searching for innocence in color-patches

*Note: Sorry this post is a day late. I was really sick yesterday and was unable to finish it.

“How can an old world be so innocent?” asks Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 43). Read out of context, one would have strong grounds to argue with her. “Haven’t you glanced at a newspaper headline or flipped on a news station lately? You don’t have to look far to conclude that the world is very much not an innocent place.” And yet, Dillard asks this question after perusing the newspaper and noting the annual photographs of cute animals, the cliché Valentine or proposal, and child waiting for a push down the hill on a sled. Perhaps Dillard means that the world is not so much “innocent” as that it looks for innocence, or a fresh take and angle on something that would give respite from all the drudgery and gloom.

One of my favorite bands is Switchfoot, and they wrote a song called “The Shadow Proves the Sunshine.” (The chorus is basically the title, ha). But after watching this music video that some of Switchfoot’s fans created, I was reminded of Dillard’s chapter titled “Seeing” and her mention of the experiences of previously-blind people when they gained their sight. If you watch this video, try to watch it in terms of the “color-patches” that Dillard describes. At least for me, the video really did seem to illustrate a confusing mass of color-patches and disorienting lack of spatial reference points—which helped me better sympathize with those people who newly received their sight.

 

I promise I’m not mindlessly rambling; here’s my point: we can interpret Dillard’s story of the “color-patches” and “seeing” as a metaphor for people’s search for innocence. If shadows prove the sunshine, then perhaps we can seek hope behind the seemingly unending scenes of hopelessness. Dillard writes, “But the color-patches of infancy swelled as meaning filled them” (32). We’re so used to encountering articles which are swelled with “meaning”—with agendas of all sorts. What is more agenda-less than a picture of “an utterly bundled child crying piteously on a sled at the top of a snowy hill” and captioned “‘Needs a Push’”? At first glance, maybe not much. But then again, what if the photographer means to spread awareness about parental abandonment or to promote familial values? How might we interpret the photo as a symbol for a political statement or issue? What if the photo implies the changing trends of technology and how most children entertain themselves nowadays?

And so we search for the sunshine casting the shadows, for the color-patches free from agenda, for a reversion back to our nostalgic idea of idyllic, childhood “happiness.”  But “[y]ou have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it—tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest—if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself—you would know it” (C.S. Lewis The Problem of Pain). We search anyway. I think perhaps this is why science features on animals are so popular. Yes, these animals are fascinating, but the features don’t often have a “so what” in terms of how this information affects people personally. Case in point: when trying to YouTube a video of the “giant water bug” Dillard writes about (8), I discovered a video on the sidebar called “Biggest Snakes in the World! SnakeBytes TV.” Upon finishing that video, I seriously watched probably four or five other videos from the same channel (this is why I typically don’t go on YouTube). The entire time I was thinking, “What am I doing? I am wasting so much time! All these videos are basically about the same thing: showing the viewer different snakes and explaining the genetics behind each. And besides, I’m scared of snakes!” But I kept watching. Why? Well…the snakes were pretty cool-looking. And maybe I was drawn to the color-patches which weren’t really color-patches at all. At any rate, I thought the “search for innocence” might be yet another reason (among the myriads) why people are drawn to science writing.

The Forced Perspective

When I was younger, I loved to swing; when I needed to think about something, I’d head to the swing set in the yard, grab a seat, and pump my legs, gaining momentum, reaching ever higher—soaring. Or at least, pretending to soar. I remember trying to imagine myself doing the same things as characters from books I’ve just read: traveling through time on a bike, hitching a ride on the back of a goose, escaping the bonds of an enemy tribe, or solving crimes with my photographic memory. Sometimes I would face away from the house and look down the hill, across my dad’s fields, to the tiny ribbon of highway seemingly hugging the base of the valley foothills and the sporadic stream of dots driving along that ribbon—and I’d wonder about the “story” behind each of those cars, the reason why and the place where someone would drive at 4:30 pm on a summer afternoon. From my college-student, analytical mindset, I could say that during those times on the swing set, I was running through different perspectives, considering life through the lens of various glasses with all sorts of different prescriptions.

How do peoples’ perspectives change? Well, typically not through swinging. A quick perusal through online sources (not scholarly, mind you) revealed several ideas: asking questions of others who don’t think like you; turning yourself physically upside-down; changing up your daily routine. All these people offered ideas about how to change perspective, but they didn’t offer insight into the actual transition from one perspective to another. For example, ask yourself if any of the readings this week changed your perspective, if even temporarily. How did they do so—or maybe the better question, what did it take to do so? What “clicked” in order to make that transition?

Basically, I’m wondering if the actual, initial transition between perspectives is one of “force” or of “choice.” Take a look at the photographs below.

Every one of these included “forced perspective” in its caption. Did you first see the intended illusion or the actual “reality”? At least for me, I first saw the illusion and then their set-up almost immediately afterwards. But the illusion—the changed perspective—came first, without my choosing it so. Therefore, apply this same concept to the readings: were they “forced” perspectives? (And I’m not saying that the different perspective is an illusion, like in the photos). If they were “forced,” I’m curious to know why. Peter Atkins (Creation Revisited) used definitions and “logical leading” to make his point about change as the result of controlled chaos; J.B.S. Haldane (“On Being the Right Size”) and Martin Rees (Just Six Numbers) used “what-if” scenarios and comparisons to emphasize to emphasize that every organism and the universe (respectively) is exactly the “right size.” (Of course, they all used other rhetorical devices as well, but are patterns I noticed from a broad overview). People may choose to believe and keep a particular, changed perspective, but I’m not so sure if they much choice in the matter of that first glimpse of changed perspective. And I think perhaps this “forced perspective” is the hardest part of the battle for science writers; knowing the how and why behind forced perspective could be the key difference between a compelling, paradigm-shifting article and one that flops.

Caught Unawares

“We are most revealed in what we do not scrutinize” claims Gould (qtd. in Mishra 141). I think this quote could be used to talk about all three texts by Mishra (“The Role of Abstraction in Scientific Illustration: Implications for Pedagogy”), Lakoff and Johnson (Metaphors We Live By—I’m guessing is the book), and Gross (“Rhetorical Analysis”). In other words, we are most revealed by what we assume.

Assumptions mask values—and beyond that, belief systems. Lakoff and Johnson describe metaphorical “concepts we live by,” which are basically “assumptions” we make at a linguistic level. For example, they point out our metaphorical concept that “argument is war” (4-6). Though they explain how we contrive argument as war, they don’t explain why we have arrived at this subtle conceptual metaphor (in contrast, note their explanation for the “time is money” metaphor on pages 8-9). Perhaps we “assume” that argument is war because we (at least Americans) value the idea of “winning” and superiority brought about by hard work and individualistic effort. Of course, even the values underlying this metaphorical concept of “argument is war” are metaphorical in nature, which leads us to question whether our values shape metaphor or metaphor shapes our values (a classic “chicken vs. egg” debate)…

Nonetheless, we might still pursue the idea that values underlie assumptions. Gross points out the common faulty assumption that science is emotionless and passionless: “the general freedom of scientific prose from emotional appeal must be understood not as neutrality but as a deliberate abstinence: the assertion of a value” (574). That value is “objectivity,” an emphasis on reason versus “unreasonable” emotion (an assumption in itself). Mishra’s discussion about a diagram of a heart compared to an actual heart (146-147) on one hand supports the assertion that diagrams are inherently symbolic for the express purpose of better understanding the reality; on the other hand, the “neat arrangements” of the diagrammed heart reveals our value for orderliness (we can control order, not chaos; ultimately, underneath the value of orderliness is the value of power).

We function by making assumptions—otherwise, we’d never be able to do anything. Just think about all the assumptions we make even waking up in the morning: 1) There’s a reality outside of me, and therefore, the alarm I’m hearing is an actual stimulus and not part of my imagination 2) the alarm is ringing, so it must be 6 am 3) I have to wake up because it’s a school day 4) I can’t miss classes because my grades will worsen…etc. etc. That’s a silly example (with a ton of assumptions built into each “assumption” itself), but I hope that it gets my point across: essentially, we are assumption-making beings. Assumptions, after all, aren’t always bad things; they are what make language and communication feasible.

However, assumptions also limit the scope of what we can “see”: “The very systematicity that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms of another…will necessarily hide other aspects of the concept” (Lakoff and Johnson 10). Following the same lines, Root-Bernstein says, “Pictures, tables, graphs can be dangerous things. Revealing one point, they hide assumptions, eliminate possibilities, prevent comparisons—silently, unobviously. Thus, a pattern makes sense of data but also limits what sense it can make up” (qtd. in Mishra 154). Throughout many of these blog posts, we’ve examined the uncertain nature of language, knowledge, and truth functioning in science; some of us have even come to the conclusion that “truth” and “knowledge” are both unstable constructs invented by humans. According to certain kinds of theoretical frameworks, these conclusions appear to make sense. However, the frameworks themselves are a sort of assumption which allows us to see certain things while at the same time obscuring others.

In the particular framework we’ve been using, we’ve discounted the existence of absolute, certain truth or knowledge because we assume that we can’t be given them from an outside source; in other words, we write off the possession of absolute truth or knowledge because we disbelieve in supernatural revelation. Underlying this assumption is probably a multitude of different values: the value of independence, freedom from judgment, and control over one’s life, to list a few. And yet, tied to the assumption that a higher power doesn’t exist are other assumptions as well: if a good, all-powerful God were real, pain wouldn’t exist in the world; nothing can exist without a cause; physical bodies couldn’t reside in “heaven”—assumptions and questions Quinn brings up in her article, “Sign Here If You Exist.”

I think it’s interesting that in his syllabus, Doug decided to label the two readings for Thursday as “Choosing truths.” The nuance of the word “choosing” makes me regard it as something done on an arbitrary whim, just as I would happen to “choose” chocolate ice cream over vanilla ice cream. But perhaps this impression is exactly the intent of the phrase. Earlier in the semester, I wrote a blog post about the “Faith of Science,” and both Liam and Doug (in a follow-up email) made excellent counterpoints about the nature of evidence and how we qualify good evidence. Doug wrote, “From the very earliest ages, we find ourselves able to have faith in something because we already have faith in something else.” Basically, we already have faith in the very evidences we use as the basis for faith in something else. It all goes back to assumptions. What if someone asserts, “Reasoning is futile nonsense”? Most of us would disagree with this statement, but we can’t prove it because the only way to argue with this statement would be to reason about it—which is a circular argument. We “know” that reasoning isn’t “futile nonsense” because we take it on faith (J. Budziszewski). 

If most of our knowledge—and reason itself—is taken on faith (which could be thought of as assumptions), then how do we “choose”?

“But which side will you choose? Reason cannot decide for us one war or the other; we are separated by an infinite gulf. A game is on, at the other side of this infinite distance, where either heads or tails may turn up. Which will you wager on?” ~Blaise Pascal

Science Writing and Sensationalism

Now don’t get me wrong: I very much respect doctors and those in the medical field, and I think their life-saving work is noble indeed. However, I long ago gave up the disillusioned idea that doctors “know it all” because medical studies supposedly provide “all the solutions” to health problems we seek. One of my siblings has very severe food and environmental allergies; just her food allergies alone include: dairy products, eggs, gluten, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, beef, pork, mustard, yellow corn, kiwi, and asparagus (as far as I know). And out of the many, many doctors she has seen, very rarely will two agree even on the type of allergy treatment or dietary supplements she should take. And yet, although I don’t believe in the omniscience of doctors, David Freedman’s “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science” about the credibility—or lack thereof—of medical research still threw me for a loop.

According to Freedman, meta-researcher John Ioannidis has statistically discovered that “much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies…is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong” (114). On one hand, especially after reading his entire article, one might conclude that Freedman’s statement seems to make sense, especially when reading an article like Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Treatment.” Freedman points out that false publications can result from the researcher’s desire for more funding; thus, we may have reason for suspicion after reading Gladwell’s account of the “miracle-drug” elesclomol discovery which saves Synta Pharmaceuticals in 2006 and provides inquiry for further research (159, 175). Gladwell’s quote from cell biologist/drug researcher Lan Bo Chen, who basically admits that they “are totally shooting in the dark” (173), also does not instill our confidence in the reliability of one of medicine’s supposedly top-notch lines of research: “in some cases you’d have done about as well by throwing darts at a chart of the genome” (Freedman 121).

On the other hand, we could be skeptical even of Freedman’s article itself. After all, Jeanne Fahnestock explains in her paper, “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts,” something changes in the translation from original scientific findings to the science news articles that laypeople could understand. That “something” is the shift from uncertainty (or at least heavily-hedged claims) to a low-supported certainty of specific results or hypotheses. To roughly summarize her paper, this shift in apparent confidence of fact occurs because of the journalist’s need to sensationalize the news to capture reader attention. Although The Atlantic, the magazine Freedman writes for, is deemed a high-quality intellectual read, it nonetheless is not specifically a science journal. The very flaws Fahnestock associates with “scientific accommodation” may very well be present in Freedman’s representation of the work of John Ioannidis.

I realize that sensationalism basically refers to something used to excite or thrill the senses. However, I think sensationalism in science writing results from using Fahnestock’s “the wonder” and “the application” appeals (279)—essentially, “how is this interesting” and “why does it matter”—in conjunction with each other. We see this especially in the readings from The Best American Science and Nature Writing this week: for example, in “The Deadliest Virus,” Michael Specter writes, “One of the world’s most persistent horror fantasies, expressed everywhere from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Jurassic Park, had suddenly come to pass: a dangerous form of life, manipulated and enhanced by man, had become lethal” (136). “The wonder” appeal: one of our worst nightmares has scientifically been produced. “The application” appeal: we’re all screwed. Though the problem of a possible pandemic is no doubt real, if we do a little digging, we most likely will discover that Specter’s writing sounds a little over-the-top compared to scientific reports and statements written by the scientists themselves (not the quotes given through phone conversations). Sensationalism in science news writing loses some of the accuracy (though Freedman would oppose this term) found in the original scientific reports, but it also effectively captures the public’s attention and stimulates funding for further research. Which is the higher priority?

  

Thoughts About Writing

1. Before and when first entering college, I thought that writing was bound by a certain set of rules. Of course, I had also often heard the popular cliché, “Learn the rules before you break them.” In my mind, this phrase applied only to a writer’s stylistic choice in “creative writing” such as short stories and memoir. In fact, I thought writing to be so governed by rules that if one only followed the proper “formula” (standard grammar rules), his or her writing will automatically be of good—or at least acceptable—quality.

Now I view “rules” more as guidelines, helpful tools for the writer. After all, “correct” grammar can sometimes serve to make a sentence more clear and concise. But the “rules” of writing extend far beyond grammar. We find certain guidelines that determine differences in genre, tone of voice, delivery of argument, etc. In this way, I don’t associate “rules” more with one kind of writing than another; all forms of writing (a term in itself we use rather loosely) are directed by particular guidelines, which allow us to build genre and rhetorical classifications in the first place. Language itself must adhere to rules or guidelines in order for it to be comprehensible. Ironically, I still think writing is bound by rules, but neither my conception of writing nor of rules is the same as before.

 

2. In the past, I thought personal opinion should be stymied in professional or academic papers. After all, we should strive for objectivity, right? However, throughout college, my views on the role of personal opinion have greatly changed. First, I’ve come to realize that pure objectivity is an ideal that no human could possibly achieve. Although we do, in some types of writing, come close to full objectivity, its realization cannot be met due to our own limited knowledge—as possessors of finite knowledge, our views are inherently subjective. Second, personal opinion may be shaped on a whim or guided by facts and evidence. If by the latter, “personal opinion” might also pose itself as “thesis.” I usually equate “thesis” with “argument,” or that main point around which rhetorical persuasion is centered. Since I believe that all writing is rhetorically motivated, I therefore think “personal opinion” also manifests itself in all types of writing.

Donald Murray states that “all writing is autobiographical.” The very way that someone writes—word choice, line of thinking, sentence structure—reflects the type of person he or she is. I think society expects some kinds of writing to be more “personal” than other kinds: writing in a diary, for instance, versus writing in a car manual. In those instances, the reader would see more of the person of the writer reflected through the diary than through the car manual.

If Doug means “personal opinion” as something entirely unsubstantiated by fact, then yes, I believe there are types of writing where opinion isn’t “allowed.” I want the person writing my car manual to know how the car works, not just think he knows how the car works. I want the journalist covering the news report to actually know the details of the story, not just think she knows what did or did not happen. In this way, “objectivity” would mean something devoid of all personal opinion—all those thoughts not guided by evidence. However, “personal” and “personal opinion” are not synonymous. “Personal” means that something comes from, or is reflective of, a particular person. So even an objective piece of writing is somewhat personal, like I mentioned earlier. I think then, perhaps the question of should it be is irrelevant.

3. Apparently I answered the previous question incorrectly since in this next prompt, we were asked to differentiate between “personal and opinion-based writing” and “objective and impersonal writing.” All right, I’ll go with the framework that there is such a thing as impersonal writing. Under that category of impersonal writing, I would list technical writing and recipe-writing—basically, the “how-to” types of writing. Also, I guess I hadn’t considered public signs (such as “stop,” “yield,” and “Denver 11 miles”) as types of writing—but if they are, they would definitely be objective and impersonal forms of writing. (They’d also disprove my earlier statement that all writing is personal; such an economy of words and tight standard of display allows really for no creative choice of the writer). Whether or not public signs count towards what most people typically think as “writing,” it does bring up a good point: the “creative choice” of the writer. The more flexibility in a piece of writing and the more opportunity for varying styles, the more “personal” and “opinion-based” that piece likely will be. That’s why, though news articles should theoretically be objective and impersonal, I wouldn’t count them as such; they aren’t as “formulaic” as technical writing, for example. Perhaps the “differences in those scenes” all come down to genre—the varying guidelines shaping and guiding a piece.

"The Romance of Science"

Whoever thought of science as “romantic”—other than some pick-up line such as, “I feel like there’s great chemistry between us”? And yet, Oliver Sacks writes that “Scheele epitomized for me the romance of science” (The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing 219). Consider this definition of romance: “A quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life” (Oxford Dictionaries). Sounds beautiful, but what does it really mean? I think this definition could imply that someone perceives those qualities or that those qualities exist objectively. For the purposes of this blog post, I’m going to assume the former implication because it arises from passion.

You might recall that I’ve already mentioned passion in my first blog post, “The Faith of Science.” However, in that post, I discussed the motivations for passion; in this post, I want to focus on the indications and translation of passion. As a definition of romance, “mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life” would therefore indicate passion; we even see these indicators in several of our readings from this week:

Mystery	Excitement	Remoteness from everyday life
“A chemist like Scheele…looking at the whole undiscovered world of natural substances and minerals, analyzing them, plumbing their secrets, finding the wonder of unknown and new metals” (Oxford 219).	“Scheele…was wholly dedicated to his work, caring nothing for fame or money and sharing his knowledge, whatever he had, with anyone and everyone” (Oxford 218).	“He seemed indifferent, or inattentive, to most things else, being wholly dedicated to his single passion, chemistry. It was this pure and passionate absorption in phenomena—noticing everything, forgetting nothing—that constituted Scheele’s special strength” (Oxford 219).
“Over dinner we discussed our plans, the thought of new hominid fossils uppermost in our minds” (Oxford 194).	“Like everyone else, I was elated. There was great excitement, joking, and laughter” (Oxford 195).	“A fossil hunter needs sharp eyes and a keen search image, a mental template that subconsciously evaluates everything…even if he isn’t concentrating hard” (Oxford 191).
“They will be able to see, and to prove, truths there that would otherwise remain hidden forever” (Best 43).	“For if something stops quantum mechanics, we shall expect to have an exciting new whatever-stops-quantum-mechanics theory…” (Best 45).	NA

I bolded certain phrases on purpose; check out the chart below to see why:

Mystery Explanation	Excitement Explanation	Remoteness Explanation
This quote acknowledges the perpetual mystery of a particular science.	What are some reasons that people “share knowledge”? Money, fame, and excitement. This quote clearly states that Scheele did not seek money or fame, so he must have shared his knowledge because of excitement—he was so stoked, and he couldn’t keep it all to himself.	I included this quote under “Remoteness from everyday life” because it demonstrated that Scheele was indeed “remote” from seemingly daily living; he was so passionately focused on one subject that everything else kind of took backstage.
What thoughts do we keep uppermost in our mind? Those which we have to ponder. Why do we ponder them? Because we have not fully grasped them; an element of mystery remains.	Why include this quote under the header, “Excitement”? It seems pretty self-evident.	This quote picks up where the last quote leaves off. To be so fixated on something would necessarily take attention away from other details. Perhaps this is why people perceive Kamoya as a man "with a great sense of calm,” although he actually is “always on the move, restless, rarely idle” (191).
This quote acknowledges that certain scientific truths have indeed been cloaked in mystery.	This quote reveals excitement in anticipation of new discoveries.	NA

[Note: although I think that romance, according to the definition I’ve given, always indicates passion, this doesn’t mean that passion always leads to romance. A fever always indicates sickness, but sickness doesn’t always lead to fever.]

Our job as science writers is basically to report passion to passion. We must somehow translate—or make “tangible, real, and apparent” (Hancock 46)—the passion of the scientists into something that would gel with the passion of the reader. Earle Holland reminds us, “Why should the readers care?” (A Field Guide for Science Writers 268); the answer to his question links with the readers’ passions. For lack of a better way to put it, are not most people passionate about themselves, their own lives? Whatever would personally affect them, whether in relation to beliefs, direct experience, knowledge, or goals, are grounds for reader care and interest. This is why we are given the directive to always report the “news,” the “why-should-you-care”; this is what will cause the reader to pick up an article to read. But what really prompts the reader to read all the way to the end of the article, to remember afterward what she’s read, is passion—the passion of the scientist, science writer, or both—that personal element that somehow connects with something inside us. This is why we should “look for the living, breathing person or people around whom to build your story” (Hancock 45). This is why we seek to capture the romance of science, that “lifelong love affair” (The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing 219) between science and scientist.

The Imaginative Space of Science

For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

               --C.S. Lewis, “Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare”

According to Lewis, we discover truth through reason and meaning through imagination.

[Note: after coming to the end of this blog post, I realized that I should probably define imagination, which unfortunately would require an entirely separate post. For now, I found a working definition of imagination from Wikipedia, which I’ve also slightly modified: “the ability to form new images and sensations in the mind that are not presently, physically perceived through senses such as sight, hearing, or other senses.”]

For example, we often employ metaphors in our writing to help readers understand the “truths” of certain ideas that aren’t necessarily picturable, such as emotions, human character, motivations, etc. The emotions or impressions aroused by metaphor are supposed to be similar to the object it analogizes, even if the literal meaning of the metaphor is completely unlike the object it represents. Suppose I write, “The man just two storefronts down was like a rattlesnake one has just realized lies in the tall grass three feet to the right.” In this case, the man isn’t like the rattlesnake in appearance, intelligence, or position; rather, the mention of the rattlesnake is meant to draw certain emotions from the reader which would reflect the character’s feelings about the man. (If you’re interested in reading more, I garnered most of these ideas from Robert Holyer’s article, “C.S. Lewis on the Epistemic Significance of the Imagination”).

We might say that imagination initiates an understanding of the significance or meaning of certain truths. The readings for this week seemed to also support this particular function of imagination. Wolpert writes, “science often explains the familiar in terms of the unfamiliar” (233). We could read this statement in many different ways (and he probably did mean that familiar, day-to-day objects are usually explained away by what appears strange), but one interpretation could be that science involves the “unfamiliar”—the fictional, the imaginative—to understand and communicate the familiar. Scientists quite often use metaphor to describe scientific concepts: the universe is foamlike; electrons orbit around atoms as if they were planets spinning around a sun; genes are part of a code; the Earth is a living organism (Robert Root-Bernstein).

We use imagination not only to understand scientific concepts but also to form questions and pursue different hypotheses. In this following passage, the “it” Carl Sagan refers to is actually science. However, I’ve decided to replace the subject with “imagination,” and I think it fits quite nicely:

[Imagination] invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. [Imagination] counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts. [Imagination] urges on us a delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything—new ideas and established wisdom. (241)

Sagan’s (modified) first sentence could highlight the role of metaphor in imagination, as I’ve already discussed. The second sentence deals with hypothesizing, and what drives hypothesizing if not imagination? Some would argue that reason and critical thinking form the basis of hypotheses, but then, that brings us back to the quote by C.S. Lewis, and we are forced to distinguish between imagination and reason. (I think the distinction hinges on the difference between truth and meaning—again, a subject for a different article and one that involves more depth than I could possibly cover in this blog post.) Sagan’s third sentence reminds me of Subrahmanya Chandrasekhar’s statement that “There is ample evidence that in science, beauty is often the source of delight” (350). To roughly summarize something of what Socrates says in Plato’s Phaedrus, the soul longs for and aspires toward the beautiful (The Rhetorical Tradition 148-155). But what kindles that desire for the beautiful? I think the spark begins with imagination: “The first step in the direction of beauty is to understand the frame and scope of the imagination” (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 225). 

Story Spinning

Spiders. They create reactions of all sorts in people. My little brother was so afraid of spiders that he’d scope his entire room with a flashlight before going to bed; my high school math teacher gave extra credit to students who would catch live spiders and leave them as gifts on her desk. No matter where you fall along the like/dislike spectrum of spiders, you’d be hard-pressed to deny that they are fascinating creatures. Their webs are extraordinary, withstanding the impact of even hurricane-strength wind. However, researchers maintain that although incredibly durable, the silk alone cannot account for such survival of the web. In 2012 a study came out that suggested spider webs are designed with a sort of “fall back” option: specific parts of the web will collapse under the brunt of great force, and although diminished, the web will still function as effectively as ever (Science Daily).

Just as spiders are web-spinning creatures, so are people story-telling creatures (Fisher 181). Notice that several of our readings feel especially “storybook” in format. David Quammen’s “Out of the Wild” appears as though it could’ve been lifted right out of a sci-fi or adventure novel; he even utilizes anthropomorphism to villainize viruses: “They lurk; they wait. They hide from the immune system rather than trying to outrun it” (The Best American Science and Nature Writing 160). “Lurk,” “wait,” and “hide” denote human activity because they all imply some sort of motivation and consciousness. But last time I checked, viruses are not “self-aware” (Microbial Life ). So why do we assign some sort of human, narrative significance to that which is not human? Or to go for the bigger question: why do we tell stories at all?

Such a huge question demands many complex answers. However, I’ll discuss just a few. First, perhaps people tell stories because of uncertainty. We may not be able to know “facts” for certain, but we’ll use what we think we know for as long as it appears to work; if the stories we spin function well enough to “catch the fly” and get the job done, then they at least bear some of the weight of credibility. “Conclusions are based on strong evidence, without waiting for an elusive proof positive…but science can afford to move ahead because it is always an evolving story, a continuing journey that allows for mid-course corrections” (A Field Guide for Science Writers 19). In other words, the “stories” of science give coherency and structure to our otherwise chaotic and complex lives, allowing us to move freely without getting caught in a web of confusion and paralyzed by the venom of uncertainty.

Second, storytelling is rhetorical, and as such, can “assist in the presentation of new insights [and] also contributes to the generating of human knowledge” (Graves 107). I realize that Graves composed her entire paper around the controversy in the above quote, but this debate has been going on for centuries: Isocrates, an ancient Greek rhetorician, writes in his Antidosis that “with this [rhetorical] faculty we both contend against others on matters which are open to dispute and seek light for ourselves on things which are unknown (The Rhetorical Tradition 75). Very well then. A discussion about the particulars of these issues lies outside the scope of this blog post; however, I would like to point out that storytelling is almost fictitious in its very nature. Paradoxically, the “fiction” helps us see more fully reality as it is. In the words of author Yann Martel, “That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?” (Life of Pi vi). For example, an artist knows that to create a “realistic” painting, one must not simply paint a tree green and an ocean blue. Rather, she must see beyond merely looking, painting blues and purples in the seemingly gray shadows dappling a wooded walkway, dazzling what appears to be a tan cliff with pinks and oranges and yellows. Her method includes something of the “fictitious,” but the end result produces something that reflects life. Therefore, I think that rhetoric in the process of investigation is indeed epistemological.

Finally, stories carry meaning, significance. We tell stories in the search of discovering purpose. It’s no coincidence that science, which describes life as we perceive it, is investigated, interpreted, and presented by rhetorical means.

Dr. Hugh Moorhead, a philosophy professor at Northeastern Illinois University, once wrote to 250 of the best-known philosophers, scientists, writers, and intellectuals in the world, asking them, “What is the meaning of life?” He then published their responses in a book. Some offered their best guesses, some admitted that they just made up a purpose for life, and others were honest enough to say they were clueless. In fact, a number of famous intellectuals asked Professor Moorhead to write back and tell them if he discovered the purpose of life! (Purpose Driven Life 23) 

Lewis Thomas states, “what our species needs most of all, right now, is simply a future” (The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing 225). With a purpose comes a future, and thus, we have a need for story spinning. 

The Faith of Science

Walk up to any person on the street and ask him or her how science is defined, and chances are, the response you get will probably run along the lines of “discovering how the world works” or “finding out truths of nature through controlled experimentation.” Even Elise Hancock writes, “Scientific truth is a matter of evidence” (Ideas into Words 14). However, I would like to contest Hancock’s statement; she should’ve written that “faith is a matter of evidence, and science is a matter of faith.”

If “evidence is supposed to be true” (Hancock 14), then why do we have a history of false scientific theories? For example, in medieval times, people observed that maggots would spring “spontaneously” from a piece of rotting meat; through repeated observations, people began to believe the theory of spontaneous generation, which stated that living things would arise from nonliving things. However, through experiments involving control and variable groups, Louis Pasteur exposed the inaccuracy of the spontaneous generation theory. Polanyi states, “Another tenet of modern science…is its ideal of empiricism” (“Scientific Controversy” 197). Empiricism emphasizes evidence as derived through the constancy of sensory experience through experiment. However, as in the case of spontaneous generation, the evidence can be easily misconstrued—that is why actual, scientific “truth” is not a matter of evidence. Faith, on the other hand, is.

Nowadays, people understand faith as “blind,” or a “leap in the dark,” used only in religious contexts. However, Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines faith as “the assent of the mind to the truth of a proposition advanced by another; belief, or probable evidence of any kind” (emphasis added). Even biblical text asserts that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1 KJV, emphasis added).One has faith in something which one has good evidence to believe. Faith is considered a “virtue” because humans are so fickle; faith leads us to continue believing something despite trivial fluctuations of opinion or indigestion or superficial opposition (of course, some people, despite all other evidence against them, still tenaciously cling in faith to something; in these cases, “faith” is just a nice cover-up for pride and stubbornness). Basically, faith is the opposite of inconstancy or mutability, which is “like forgotten lyres whose dissonant strings / Give various response to each varying blast, / To whose frail frame no second motion brings / One mood or modulation like the last” (Shelley).  Such a turn of opinion (it’s too shallow to label “belief”) is caused by a lack of conviction based on evidence-following.

Intricately tied into the concept of faith is not only evidence but also passion. The heuristic passion that Polanyi mentions—the passion derived from knowledge gained through experience—motivates scientists to “enrich the world” (194). A prime example of heuristic passion in action is the kindergartner who goes home and excitedly shares with her mother all that she’s learned in school that day (“Mommy, did you know that red and blue make purple?! Could we play with food coloring too?”). That heuristic passion both inspires one toward further discovery (Polanyi 194) and manifests itself as tenderness with the subject of research; Siddhartha Mukherjee eloquently states, “When I witness science in action, I see this tenderness in abundance” (The Best American Science and Nature Writing xviii). Heuristic knowledge constitutes part of the “evidence” that make up faith, and as such, faith has a very, very personal element to it. The process by which knowledge is gained through experience plays a part in an individual’s story; as storytelling creatures, we also try to insert our characters into whatever story is being told at the time. I think this is why we encounter problems like the ones expressed in Jon Mooallem’s article, “The Love That Dare Not Squawk Its Name”: “For whatever reason, we’re prone to seeing animals…as reflection, models, and foils of ourselves; we’re extraordinarily, and sometimes irrationally, invested in them” (254). Anthropomorphism (this inserting ourselves into the story) even appears in a matter-of-fact excerpt from Jared Diamond’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee: “You yourself would not want to carry out a lengthy courtship and copulate under the watchful eyes of others; many animals do not want to either” (The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing 111).

Based on a system of faith, “science” is not as objective as we think; remember, “the genesis of scientific knowledge remains an unyieldingly, obstreperously hand-hewn process” (Mukherjee xviii-xix). Therefore, as science writers, we have all sorts of options when composing a paper: investigating the “line of evidence” behind a particular paradigm or taken-for-granted scientific “fact”; interviewing a scientist about his “heuristic passion” driving his research, etc. By redefining our conceptions of what constitutes science, we might also reconsider how we go about science writing.