provocotive opinion Mirrors and Microscopes Gale Rhodes Department of Chemistry, University of Southern Maine, Portiand, ME 04103 Robert Schaible Department of English, University of Southern Maine, Portiand, ME 04103
.. .Most non-scientists have no conception of that [scientific] edificeat all. Even if they want to have it, they can't. It is rather as though, over an immense range of intellectualexperience,a whole group was tone-deaf.Except that this tone-deafness doesn't come : by nature, but by training, or rather the absence of training.' How many times have you heard a scientist claim that there are more scientists who read Shakespeare than nonscientists who read science? This statement, often made in selfcongratulation as we hemoan the continuing failure of science education for the nonscientist, reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationships of science and literature to our lives. Whether the statement is true or false, the number of people in either discipline reading in the other is woefully small; furthermore, if the statement is true, i t is not for reasons that justify scientists' congratulating themselves for open-mindedness and breadth of interest; its truth follows from the nature of science and literature. The misconceptions that underlie the scientist's claim may be a t the root of our problems in helping nonscientists to approach, understand, and appreciate science. First, we want to examine why, no matter how effective are our efforts to educate the nonscientist, Shakespeare, or literature in general, will continue to have more fans than scientific writing. Then we want to discuss the implications of our views for the science education of the nonscientist, suggesting that excellent science courses are essential, hut not enough. The day will not dawn when the majority of readers delight more in science than in literature, for two important reasons. First, more of us have the required experience, more of us are qualified, to read literature. When the scientist sits down to read science, she draws on her natural curiosity, but also, of necessity, she draws on her professional experience: on her education, her teaching, her research. She must do so because much science writing, particularly the primary material, is highly technical. Indeed, many of the professional journals that any scientist reads are virtually incomprehensible even to specialists in other areas of science. The scieutist must therefore draw on her expertise in order to fit what she reads into satisfying wholes, both the whole picture of nature that science attempts to build and the whole picture of science itself and its apparent progress, which helps her to understand why what she learns today may contradict what she learned yesterday. The nonscientist does not bring these qualifications to his reading of science. As a result, he does not as easily construct a comprehensible picture from it and thus finds his picture, if he can form one a t all, unclear or incomplete, as though seen through a darkened glass. Furthermore, what the scientist reads in a particular area of
science will connect with some of her deepest interests, which are also scientific. but thev will not necessarilv connect with the deepest interests oi the general reader br the student of literature. Now when the general reader and the scientist sit down to read the best literature, is the nonscientist more likely to derive understanding and pleasure from his efforts than is the scientist? Not a t all. Even when the scientist is pitted against the literary specialist, the tables are not completely turned. While the Shakespeare scholar undoubtedly brings to his readine an exoertise not shared bv the scientist-in literary form, style, theory, and history-the literature may nonetheless connect with the d e e ~ e sinterests t of both readers; and, indeed, both are qualiied in an important sense (oerhans the most i m ~ o r t a n sense) t for the task of under&anding and appreciating literature. While molecules, rate laws, and wave functions inform the world of only one of these readers, both of them have struggled to understand what it means to he human, finite, frail. Both, like Juliet, have loved without hope. Both, like Macbeth, have been ambitious and wished someone dead. Like Lear, both have become enraeed over the ineratitude of others. Like Hamlet. both have seised the rot in ;he world, suffered the slings and arrows of their own articular fate. and found themselves unable to set matters right. The scholar cannot bring the scientist's whole career of experience to the reading of science. But each of them, sitting down before the fire and o ~ e n i n pa volume of ~ l a y sis, human. he second reason that science will not attract as many readers as literature is that science does not uffer as clear and direct a view of itsowncreativegeniusasdoes literature. There is, of course, a considerable body of readable science writine available to the eeneral reader. Much of this. to be sure, is of little value, eitlher reporting on technological gadgetry or presenting current scientific models as if they were the facts as seen by gray-eyed, coldly objective scientists. Still, outstanding, comprehensible writing about science can be found: Lewis Thomas on biology and medicine, Stephen Jay Gould on evolution, Richard Fevnman and Nick Herbert ~ n - ~ h ~ s Carl i c s ,Sagan on astronomy, I'rimo Levi on chemistry. These writers offer full and coherent pictures of how science contributes to our world view; theyshow science as dynamic and evolving. Nonetheless, they still fall short of the reader's hopes, for the best science writing is secondhand science, and many general readers are put off by the
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Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution; Cambrldge University: New York. 1961; p 15. Volume 65 Number 11 November 1988
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distance between themselves and the scientific achievement. In literature, the reader approaches the writer's creation in its original form. But the great work of science is often first presented to the world in highly technical form in a primary journal, unfathomable. Only much later will interpretations appear. And no matter how rich and fresh the prose of these internretations. the hunerv - . reader knows that he dines on commentary instead of original science. T o grasp his disapnointment. imaeine the feelines of the scientist were she Forced to read c;/ticisms of kt instead of the text itself, or fvrced to attend lectures on the olav instead of live perfur. mances. This direct access to the gieat work of literature offers a gratification forever forbidden to the same reader who tries to come face to face with the genius of science, the obscurity of which is like a veil to he parted only for the initiated few.> The authors believe that no matter how well we educate nonscientists in the ways of science, and educate them we must if they are to participate fully in a society molded by science, the scientist's claim, with which we began this paper, willstill be true, hut is no cause for self-aggrandizement. Science deals with the what of our world, literature deals with the who of ourselves, and more of us are qualified to hear, more of us are interested in, the latter. For literature is horn of the same impulse that draws our eyes toward the lighted windows of homes we pass while walking in the night. We are incurably human, and mirrors, as well as windows, will always he more popular than microscopes. Having reached this conclusion, the authors have asked themselves how to take advantage of the nonscientist's interests to deepen his understanding of this nonetheless powerful scientific force within society. Clearly the answer lies, for the most part, in better education. As everyone knows, one part of this task is to provide the nonscience student with some real (''hands on" is the jargon) experience in science, through thoughtfully devised laboratory courses that emphasize (1) scientific exploration and judgment, (2) the construction of models in an effort to explain measured or observed results of experiments, and (3) the search for connections between the seemingly unrelated. The facts of science are important, but the manner in which facts are determined to he facts (or relevant ones) in the first place and the way laws and theories are constructed from the facts make the most crucial content, because these activities reflect science's underlying human spirit: the fallible, ohserving, creating mind faced with inscrutable nature. C. P. Snow has argued that for science to he useful to art, and thus to an understanding of our humanness, "it has got to he assimilated along with, and as part and parcel of, the whole of our mental experience, and used as naturally as the rest."3 Science courses for the nonscientist are essential, but they are not enough to effect this kind of assimilation. They ferry students across the river t o science land, but they do not bridge that river to connect science to the principle interests of the nonscientist. Those of us who teach science cannot build this span while standing stubbornly on our own soil. We bemoan our students' lack of interest in our discipline, but how interested are we in probing the larger human concerns that make our students such varied and complex beings? How willing are we to search for the links between science and the humanities that provide a broad, coherent picture of both the who and the what of us? What are the building materials for such bridges? One is language. At the University of Southern Maine, we are offering a new interdisciplinary course called "Metaphor and Myth in Science and Literature". (A fuller account of this course will appear in the future.) Using poetry, drama,
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Journal of Chemical Education
fiction, and scientific nonfiction, we are exploring the relationships between scientific language and literary language. We examine the works of literature and the writings of scientists for their own inherent value; but we lay a bridge between them hv emnhasizine metanhor as used (1) hv the scientist groping toinderstand the natural world (what we are), and (.2.) hv . the writer eronine to understand the human world (who we are). We kgges
