I’m a little intimidated. This is my first blog entry. My first public foray in my exploration of Biosphere 2. And I’m following in the footsteps of the Amazing Esme Schwall, the first intern for this experiment. Like Esme, I’m a student in the University of Arizona’s MFA program for Creative Writing. I will try to minimize duplication of Esme’s posts, though some may be inevitable. (If you haven’t seen Esme’s blog entries from the last two semesters, here’s a link).
Creative Writing and Biosphere 2 are not the most obvious match. In theory we’re mixing science with art, research with writing, but with the understanding that art and writing have primacy. I’m not even tasked, per se, with public relations. A scientist might describe this internship as an introduction of two elements together in an experiment. Will there be a reaction? A bond? Will something precipitate, and if so, might it be art?
That word, art, feels a little pretentious. But it is safe to say I am drawn to this project for reasons beyond the purely rational. In my previous life as an environmental lawyer many of my colleagues were scientists. My wife teaches high school biology and my uncle taught high school sciences for many years; so science is a relevant conversation in my life. But I have noticed over the years in my fiction and journaling that there has always been a strong element of intellectual inquiry and internal dialectics. This tendency may not be fully scientific, but it belies the influence of science on my education. I learned it is important to have articulable reasons for one’s beliefs. The counterbalance to my compulsion toward rational explanation is my need to experience the world as an artist, and my allegiance to cognition that defies reason. Someone once told me that the longest journey I would ever undertake was about 16 inches, or roughly the distance from my brain to my heart. I’m obviously still en route.
Perhaps this internal tension is the source of my attraction to the intersections of seemingly disparate or unmatched disciplines. I like the part of the Venn diagram where the circles overlap, or the places -- on maps or in laws of physics – where bright lines become fuzzy upon closer scrutiny. In stories I like the in-between worlds, the no-man’s land where the normal rules don’t apply. The crone's house on the edge of the woods in myth. Bogart’s Casablanca in film. Most of all I am a sucker for how we human beings -- who by nature tend to attach themselves to groups, ideologies, and ways of ordering the universe that exclude any others -- can find ways to connect across these divides.
Speaking of connections, this is probably a good time to mention Fenton and Mitch -- Fenton Johnson, a UA creative writing professor who has published acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction, and Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman, who has many titles next to his PhD, but whom I’ll call a Biosphere 2 eco-biologist and any-moment-now new father (!). As I suggested earlier, the Creative Writing program and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the U of A are not commonly partners. But Fenton and Mitch happened to join the University’s faculty-staff choir last year. And you know what they say, people who sing together … create funky internships. So here I am. How’s that for strange intersections?
I’m sorry, but I have to interrupt this very serious and important post about weighty matters of obvious social relevance (possibly the title of David Eggers’ next novel) to laugh at myself. If you knew how ridiculously long it just took me to insert that sad little diagram at the top of this post, you’d laugh, too.
I've been reading a new book about Biosphere 2, Dreaming the Biosphere, by Rebecca Reider.
Perhaps you remember the basic project like I did: some people with money built a miniature version of the Earth in a bubble, complete with different climates and ecosystems; then they send some people inside to live. It turns out this is essentially correct, but beyond that, it is hard to pin down one exact purpose. Were the people in the bubble testing our ability to survive in a sealed-off environment? Or was it about learning to live within our means on Earth, testing human beings’ ability to see and care for this planet as an integrated system? Was it ecological or sociological? Science or science fiction? And what if anything do these questions have to do with the facility’s present mission?
Perhaps you remember the basic project like I did: some people with money built a miniature version of the Earth in a bubble, complete with different climates and ecosystems; then they send some people inside to live. It turns out this is essentially correct, but beyond that, it is hard to pin down one exact purpose. Were the people in the bubble testing our ability to survive in a sealed-off environment? Or was it about learning to live within our means on Earth, testing human beings’ ability to see and care for this planet as an integrated system? Was it ecological or sociological? Science or science fiction? And what if anything do these questions have to do with the facility’s present mission?
Rebecca Reider was one of the students who came to B2 long after the original ‘manned missions,’ when it was under the management of Columbia University as a research facility in the early 00’s. She describes how the original B2 mission was largely perceived by the media and the public as a failure. My own vague recollections were of some sort of astronauts-in-a-terrarium soap opera, reality television before its time. In fact, a tour guide on my first visit to the facility told me that the creator of the reality TV show Big Brother got the idea from reading about B2 in an in-flight magazine. Reider points out that a major source of the negative perception was the controversy about whether or not the project was ‘real science.’ Many of the biospherians (the people who lived inside) weren’t degreed scientists, and the primary designers seemed more hippie commune than Harvard. (It turns out they were both). And, it didn’t help that the biospherians wore funky matching jumpsuits in the press photos and claimed to be preparing for future space colonization. Ultimately, the media treated it as a freak show, like some David Blaine-ish stunt to see if people could remain hermetically sealed off with no help for two years. When they didn’t, which Reider points out was never a defining goal, it was ridiculed.[i]
Reider provides ample evidence that the original mission was not a failure from a scientific standpoint. But what intrigues me more is her suggestion that society’s need to classify B2 as one thing or the other, science or psuedo-science, ultimately says more than the results. In other words, what is science and why would we have to divide an enterprise so neatly into science and non-science piles?[ii] “Why must art and science be separate?” Reider asks. “Why must the thinking mind be separate from the feeling heart?”[iii]
Reider’s account suggests that B2 has always been about integrating our rigid circles of thought. And on my first visit to B2, Mitch talked to me about the impact in the ecological sciences of the schism between accepted science and public acceptance of same. In his field, scientists talk more and more about strategems to communicate their ideas to non-scientists than about new scientific discoveries. B2 today is perhaps the world’s largest environmental laboratory, a place where uniquely large experiments in integrated sciences can be carried out in a controlled environment. But it is also about education and connecting science to lay people. All staff working at B2, from tenured professors to graduate research assistants, must be willing to stop what they are doing and answer questions from the public. This outreach goal may in fact be the most ambitious and important one at B2 because it is here where scientists try to solve the problem of how to cross over from one circle to another. As B2 Director, Dr. Travis Huxman, says, “It is about filling the gap between the laboratory and the real world.”
I am fascinated by this gap because I think it is one of those interesting no-man's lands and perhaps the place where new questions may be found to transect the increasing polarities that define our times. Because the disparity exists within me. I can empathize with those who chafe at science as a controlling narrative, but I am perhaps more frustrated with those who, like our former President, George W. Bush, would deny the existence of global warming in spite of an overwhelming consensus among the world's scientists. I can see how for many, science has become a dogma -- note how many of us refuse to believe in the existence of anything that cannot be proven rationally. As Carl Jung pointed out, the rational mind is severely limited, and scientific instruments can do no more than extend the range of the five senses. Experiences that provide the most profound meaning for most of us are understood only at a level beyond the rational. Art and religion share this territory and both traffic in story and symbol to convey their meaning. But what if your friends are standing in a dark, noisy tunnel and can’t see the train coming, how do you convince them to get out of the way? Maybe science needs art more than ever.
Thanks for checking this out. Feel free to leave a comment.
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