How I feel about science

Hello Splodgies! 

....There are lots of feelings I have about science. 

Number one on the list of things I feel about science is that it is FASCINATING.

Following closely behind are that it is also the only way we know anything and yet we can never possibly know everything because science is imperfect in it's methods used for fathoming the unmeasurable. 

I can sit and read about science for a long time- and discuss it at length with other people. So for ease of writing (because this could be a very long blogpost otherwise that I have neither the time or energy to do) I shall split it into the sections that I had studied them at school. They frequently overlap one another although most of my teachers liked to pretend otherwise. So, in alphabetical order...

Biology

Living stuff. And dead stuff. Basically stuff that is or has been alive. So so so much variety here. And I think that its strange how a bog standard plant cell is quite a lot more complicated than the bog standard animal cell- mainly in that it contains more parts. Or this was how I felt until I had studied cell microbiology at A-level. There is probably a person who has studied biology further than me who's reading this and thinking "...she has no idea" and you're right. Despite being very enthusiastic about studying living and having lived things, a teacher put me off studying it forever when he told me I was going to fail my A- level. I didn't fail it, but I only achieved a grade D. But in a grammar school those things are almost synonymous. 

I had something of a Darwinian interest in biology in that my main interest stemmed from my interest in animals and what made them different form each other. It wouldn't have been unusual for an 8 year old version of myself to be found on a very old computer using a CD-ROM (remember those??) of the Dorling Kindersley Children's Encyclopedia of Animals, or watching a video taped episode of Wildlife on One from before I was born. I remember feeling thoroughly irritated when the channel it was broadcast on was changed and it became Wildlife on Two instead. In my brain I had justified this in that "It didn't rhyme" not yet having the vocabulary to describe what I would later understand as the concept of alliteration. Either way, my interest in human biology didn't really start until I started properly thinking about the science of my own health. And I got really into the structure and workings of eyes as soon as I started wearing glasses that wouldn't make the present version of myself cringe with how horrible they were. I even considered being an optician after a lengthy discussion with a locum optometrist who was testing my eyes and asking her questions about how all the different slit lamps and so on worked. I still don't know the difference between an optician and an optometrist but I still like having these conversations whenever I visit one. 

Chemistry

Non-living stuff. But also the way by which living stuff continues living. This is a key example of how my teachers (particularly in secondary school, but before 6thform) would pretend that other areas of science didn't overlap. It's all very well having twelve year olds burning magnesium in a crucible over a bunsen burner, but if they are led to believe that there is no use for these kinds of reactions in biology, then that's just... stupid. Because of course bodies need magnesium. My ghosts of chemistry teachers past were much more accepting of physics as an overlapping science because they could demonstrate it happening with all kinds of electron diagrams explaining why certain elements bonded to others, and why some didn't bond to anything at all. Much like I never bonded my intellectual curiosity to pursuing chemistry further. Whilst I did find it interesting how certain chemicals would glow, and some would smell if you poured this onto it, I found that (as with much of my learning at that age) I felt there was no real practical application for what I was learning, and so disregarded it as something that I only needed to know until I was out of the exam.

Which is kind of a shame really, because there are some really interesting bits of chemistry. And if you'll excuse the pun I've kind of burned my bridges with chemistry. I don't think there's any going back to chemistry study-wise at least. Unless its coming at it from a biological point of interest I don't think I'll be going back there.

Physics

I love physics. Because it makes me understand how things work in a mechanical sense. But it also makes me understand things on much larger scales like how planets work and stars and gravity and how elements are forged in stars. Simple things like hydrogen and helium. And again, how things work on tiny little scales, along with my old frenemy chemistry. How things move on a molecular level is fascinating! I like cosmic physics in particular. How because of some tiny coincidence the exact distance between our planet and the sun that we're always going round and around is in the perfect zone of being neither too hot nor too cold and allowed all that other chemistry and biology to happen! What are the chances? Relatively slim. 

My main problem with physics is that it uses a language to understand it's theoretical side that I don't understand very well. Mathematics. I just cannot wrap my head around the numbers- it's my main downfall in having studied physics in the past. I can't do the maths, so it looks like I don't understand. But give me a diagram or a model and I can explain how/why something I learnt about physics works. I think this inability to express what I've learnt or measure and calculate things is a reason that I've not pursued physics academically and rather choose to read about it in my own time for my own interests or watch documentaries or talk to people who know more about it than I do so that I can understand more. Because I love understanding things! 

Psychology

This might be my favourite one. The science of how people think and behave. Which is something that I find both endlessly fascinating and confusing. I feel like I might not fall within a bell curve of normal cognition, but rather on the outer edge of the decline or incline of that bell curve. Not right at the ends but...yeah. But then maybe everyone feels like that. I just don't know. 

One of the things that I both like and dislike about psychology is that most of what it is cannot be measure. You can say "How much can you remember about x?" and the answer is never going to be "I have retained a total of 13GB of information, only 40% of which I am consciously aware of" because you cannot turn a human brain into a computer. It seems strange that people would try to make a brain into something as definite and quantifiable as a computer. And yet at the same time I think that's a very human thing to do because it would help us to understand how it worked, and in understanding something better we can utilise it more efficiently. I know that there is that saying that popped up from somewhere "We only use about 10% of our mental capacity" but whoever said that was making that up too- because mental capacity is so variable between people that measuring 10% of any person's mental capacity is just not do-able!  Humans like to divide most things into a binary "yes" or a "no" and that any area in between also needs categorising. But the thing is, there are as many categories as there are people, so it seems a little... well silly to me.

Another thing I really like about psychology (and here I'm using artistic licence to blur between the lines of psychology and sociology) is how it distinguishes how beings with consciousness interact with each other and communicate emotional intelligence. This is one of the things that I feel is a good argument for my continuing to be a vegetarian- if an animal has the emotional intelligence to feel and express a range of complex emotions then it has the capacity to feel suffering as a by-product of being reared purely for food, even if the animal didn't understand that it's purpose was to be nothing more than fuel. If I were forced to eat meat for dietary or survival purposes, I would stick to eating birds or fish, because their non-mammalian brains are more primitive in their structure and would be less likely that they could feel such acute distress at this pre-determined purpose that they have no control over. If I was to voluntarily eat meat I would be very very picky about where it came from. To the point at which its easier just to be a vegetarian. 

....and that's all I have to say about science right now! I would've written some more, but whilst I was writing this I got involved in a comment war on facebook with my sister. This took up some considerable time, and I hate to use this excuse again, but I am so tired now that I simply must go to sleep. It's been a little while since I've written this much on a blogpost but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. If you don't like science them... well sorry I haven't catered to your tastes very well. And if you really don't like science than I can only assume you haven't read that much about it because there is so much to read!! It's brill! 

Tonight, this is me:

See you tomorrow!

-Rosa

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