Everyone has a completely different perspective on life, but just how different does the world look to someone with a strong educational background in physical and biological sciences? I pondered this question a great deal during the nine months between my acceptance to engineering school and my first day there. I thought about how an in-depth scientific education would change the way I look at the world and what the ramifications of such an understanding would be. To work through my conflicting emotions, I started writing a short story about a high school senior lured into a scientific education by extraordinary promises:
"“But when all of this is said and done, you’ll know exactly who you are and what you’re doing on this planet.”
“I won’t have time to think, let alone find myself.”
“It’s intrinsic to science, don’t you see?!” Tommy slid onto the desk and leaned close to me. His eyes, bright as hummingbirds and just as jittery, flitted across my face. “And you're going to learn more about your own life than anyone! You’ll get some paint on your shirt and visualize the chemical structure of the pigments. You’ll blink and calculate how air resistance curls your eyelashes. You’ll laugh and recognize what muscles relax to form the dimple in your left cheek." His gaze softened. "You’ll understand the reflex pathway causing you to blush whenever I look at you too closely.”
I lglanced at my hands, then remembered my molecular biology. “Beta-adrenergic stimulation activates adenylyl cyclase, which raises cyclic AMP levels, which dilates facial capillaries.”
The perspective of the story flits between the curious student and the jaded doctor she becomes, between a girl searching for some beauty in life and a woman who can't find beauty in anything. It took me four years to finish writing because it took four years for me to understand what I was trying to write.
120 credits of technical courses happened during those four years, and every circuit and every metabolic pathway and every differential equation made my world look a little bit different. So much science happened so gradually that I internalized an entire new world outlook without even realizing it.
Today, I took the elevator with a woman who tried -- and failed -- to make a phone call as we traveled between floors. She frowned at her BlackBerry, I muttered the words "Faraday cage," and she had no idea what I was talking about. For the first time in a long time, it dawned on me that people actually exist who can stand in an elevator without thinking of electrical fields rearranging charges.
As I rode the subway home today, shifting my weight from one leg to the other to balance against the inertia of the moving train, I tried to remember a life before scientific enlightenment and realized that I couldn't. But why would I want to? Honestly, how can someone book a stateroom on a cruise without first calculating the center of mass of the ship? How can someone examine a windshield crack without knowing how the defect will propagate? How can someone make cream of tomato soup without understanding why a spoonful of baking soda needs to go into the pot?
I agree with Richard Feynman; I adore knowing and find that life is incredibly beautiful when you understand the science behind it. But honestly, on some level, is not knowing just as fulfilling? Does my lack of ignorance mean that I'm missing out on the simple pleasures?
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1 comment:
I don't think you're missing out on "simple pleasures"; you're using your knowledge as an advantage to make those pleasures even more pleasurable. (If that makes sense.)
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