The larger writing project I’m working on for Biosphere 2 is based on a kind of biomimetic epiphany that became a hypothesis. I will not go into the details here, but as I work on it I keep remembering a story attributed to either Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. or William James, depending on whose apocrypha you subscribe to. The great man wakes up from a dream, in one version ether-induced, having been struck to the core with a profound awareness. The secret to life, the universe, and everything is within his grasp. Frantically he scribbles down his message from the nether realms and promptly falls back asleep. In the morning he wakes to read his great truth: “A strong smell of turpentine pervades the whole."
The theory I’m working on has not so much turned to turpentine as languished on the back burner of my mind, somewhere between “I don’t know what to do with it” and “even if I did who would care.” But as I write now I know that I have also sought to protect it from the potentially killing light of day. Perhaps it’s just a seed that’s been waiting for the right soil.
Growing up I often lost points in math for failing to show my work. In writing, I’ve found myself susceptible to the same problem. I tend to think in terms of getting an answer – or not – while forgetting that the journey toward answers may be more valuable than the end. A writer recently admonished me that showing the journey is what writers do.
Having of late more conversations with scientists has rekindled a paradigm I had left to the days when life was democratically divided by academic disciplines. Scientific method requires showing one’s work. In fact, the one thing that saved Victor Flemming’s discovery of penicillin was a professionalism that compelled him to unenthusiastically publish his results. Like many of the most influential discoverers, Columbus, for example, or the Medieval alchemists, Flemming stumbled across his finding while looking for something else – and didn't seem to realize what he had. Macbeth says, “All our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death;” yet there is a grand tradition in science and mythology of wise men succeeding who thought themselves fools and fools finding lights by shamelessly pursuing their folly.
My admiration for fools and foolishness increases with my tuition. I aspire to be a better fool, less afraid of failure and more willing to explore. Scientific method gives a hopeful respectability to my stumbling – and even a useful set of steps to cadge. Writers may make observations, ask questions, develop a hypothesis. So far so good. Then gather data, perform experiments – hold that thought, analyze the data, okay, revisit the hypothesis. Then publish. Well, we try.
As for conducting experiments, in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, the Dueña Alfonsa says, “In history there are no control groups.” Even good metaphors break down somewhere. Still, it’s all about the approach, the construct. The question is not whether it’s true but whether it is useful. Science itself is a construct, a tool, with its own limitations. Human beings, scientists included, tend to turn their favorite constructs into rules and rules into rituals. Rituals become sacred and then … and then right and wrong becomes a matter of life and death. Constructs – just try them on, like sunglasses, see if they help. Evolution, for example. It doesn’t block UV rays, but it sure is helpful if certain people, doctors at the CDC for example, know how to use it.
If you’re a painter, try turpentine.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Creation Story, Part II
One day last semester, I complained to my workshop professor about a weekend I had just spent trying to rewrite a short story. I told him I felt like I’d spent three days spinning my wheels without anything to show for it. In response he told me that in order to survive as a writer it was essential I find a way to give myself credit for the daily process of writing, which often includes a good deal of wheel-spinning. He said that all writers must find a way to gain satisfaction in simply showing up with the pen and pad or sitting at the keyboard for the hours they say they're going to work, regardless of what comes of it. This is something I’ve yet to be able to do consistently.
It’s ironic sometimes to think that creating a story can seem so difficult. After all, storytelling is universal across all known cultures. Everyone can tell a story, at least that’s what most people I talk to seem to think. But can everyone tell a good one? I want to ask. This week, as I'm going through my World Cup withdrawals, I'm reminded of a quaint phrase the English commentators have for a player having a bad game. “He’s lost the plot,” they say.
Stories are especially important for those who go against the drift of society's standards or expectations. Daring and new ventures need the context of a compelling story, and completion of a project as improbable as Biosphere 2 was testament to John Allen's famous skills in both telling and choosing powerful narratives. As I pointed out last week, from the time in the early 1980’s when his team first began sharing the idea of Biosphere 2 with the world, Allen identified it with the ‘space race’ and trips to the stars. But the working mythology seems to have been much loftier than just a Cold War paradigm. As Rebecca Reider puts it in Dreaming the Biosphere:
"From the beginning … Biosphere 2 was much more than an ecological project, more than a glass greenhouse, and even more than a model space station … [I]t was to be, quite literally, a new world. (74-75). "
An often-told tale used to illustrate the importance of stories as context involves three bricklayers (or stonemasons in some versions) who were said to have been working in Chartres, France in the Middle Ages. A traveler asks the first bricklayer, who appears to be toiling unhappily, what he is doing, and the bricklayer says something like “earning a wage.” The man asks the same question of the second bricklayer, who seems a little happier but struggling still, and this second worker says, “providing for my family.” But the third bricklayer appears beatific, and he is getting the most work done, too. This bricklayer, in answer to the question, says, “I’m building a cathedral.”
Judging by the effort and sacrifice it inspired, Biosphere 2 emerged as a kind of cathedral for all those who enlisted in making it work. The distinction is that people have a fair amount of agreement as to what a cathedral is, while Biosphere 2 was more subjective in its meaning – a dream that woke the latent dreams in others. Reider’s and Poynter’s books tell repeatedly of individuals who went above and beyond the call of duty on their pieces of Biosphere 2. From world renowned scientists, architects, and engineers, to local construction workers, to the team of disciplined idealists who ultimately comprised the first mission, people worked extremely long, sometimes outrageous hours for little pay; this in spite of the apparent fact noted last week that if you asked twenty different people what B2’s purpose was you might get twenty different answers. Perhaps it doesn’t matter that people agree on a single purpose for a grand endeavor, at least not in the beginning. Stories of B2 would show that it may have mattered tremendously in the end, but that, as they say, is a story for another day. What we do know is that the collective result of the individual passions inspired by B2 was a project whose existence was completely unlikely in the context of the ordinary views of reality at the time.
As I take stock of my first year in the MFA writing program, I realize I am still searching for a narrative that sees cathedral bricks in all of the mud my metaphorical tires kick up. I am working on a story that empowers me consistently in my process. Maybe this can only be achieved up to a point. As Natalie Goldberg says of writers in Writing Down the Bones: “Every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before.” It’s always an act of faith. And still I work to find my plot.
All references to Rebecca Reider's work from: Dreaming the Biosphere: the Theater of All Possibilities © 2009, Univ. of New Mexico Press.
All references to Jane Poynter's work from: The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 © 2006, Jane Poynter.
It’s ironic sometimes to think that creating a story can seem so difficult. After all, storytelling is universal across all known cultures. Everyone can tell a story, at least that’s what most people I talk to seem to think. But can everyone tell a good one? I want to ask. This week, as I'm going through my World Cup withdrawals, I'm reminded of a quaint phrase the English commentators have for a player having a bad game. “He’s lost the plot,” they say.
Stories are especially important for those who go against the drift of society's standards or expectations. Daring and new ventures need the context of a compelling story, and completion of a project as improbable as Biosphere 2 was testament to John Allen's famous skills in both telling and choosing powerful narratives. As I pointed out last week, from the time in the early 1980’s when his team first began sharing the idea of Biosphere 2 with the world, Allen identified it with the ‘space race’ and trips to the stars. But the working mythology seems to have been much loftier than just a Cold War paradigm. As Rebecca Reider puts it in Dreaming the Biosphere:
"From the beginning … Biosphere 2 was much more than an ecological project, more than a glass greenhouse, and even more than a model space station … [I]t was to be, quite literally, a new world. (74-75). "
Biospherian Jane Poynter confirms as much in her book, saying: “We had realized the dream of building a new world that we would infuse with our own Synergist values.” (The Human Experiment, 208) And Reider chronicles well how the media, as well as several members of the design team, would frequently invoke Biblical references – particularly the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Ark – as narratives for the project.
An often-told tale used to illustrate the importance of stories as context involves three bricklayers (or stonemasons in some versions) who were said to have been working in Chartres, France in the Middle Ages. A traveler asks the first bricklayer, who appears to be toiling unhappily, what he is doing, and the bricklayer says something like “earning a wage.” The man asks the same question of the second bricklayer, who seems a little happier but struggling still, and this second worker says, “providing for my family.” But the third bricklayer appears beatific, and he is getting the most work done, too. This bricklayer, in answer to the question, says, “I’m building a cathedral.”
As I take stock of my first year in the MFA writing program, I realize I am still searching for a narrative that sees cathedral bricks in all of the mud my metaphorical tires kick up. I am working on a story that empowers me consistently in my process. Maybe this can only be achieved up to a point. As Natalie Goldberg says of writers in Writing Down the Bones: “Every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before.” It’s always an act of faith. And still I work to find my plot.
All references to Jane Poynter's work from: The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 © 2006, Jane Poynter.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Creation Story, Part 1
Creation Story, Part I
Create: (according to my Webster’s New Universal Unabridged): “1. to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes.”
Create, creative, creation. My graduate program, this blog space are touted as creative writing. Last December I met a woman who asked me what that meant. I don’t think I ever gave her a satisfactory answer. In some ways, I’ve never struggled so much to feel creative, in others, I’ve never been so clear in my ability to create.
‘Something unique that would not naturally evolve.’ I’ve been reading a lot more about the original Biosphere 2 project; Rebecca Reider’s book, Dreaming the Biosphere, and Jane Poynter’s, The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2. The more I read, the more I come to view Biosphere 2’s existence as a creative (rather than scientific) achievement. Then again, Jane Poynter writes: “If you ask twenty people who were part of the project what the aim of it was, you would receive close to twenty different responses.” (p. 103). And also, “The Biosphere was a big Rorschach test with everyone seeing through his or her own lens.” (p. 65).
At Biosphere 2’s inception, the founders and the mainstream press frequently invoked the US manned space flight programs for comparison. It may have seemed grandiose, but the original B2 mission was in many ways a greater testament to the power of a creative vision than the lunar landings. For one thing, B2 was more ambitious technically and scientifically – the ultimate goal was a self-sustaining miniature Earth capable of being exported to other planets. For another, B2 was created and controlled by John Allen. He had a Harvard MBA and an engineering degree, but his previous two decades had been mostly spent leading a series of communes and a traveling theater troupe; the Mercury and Apollo programs were directed by actual rocket scientists. Both the books I mentioned above devote whole sections to exposing the unfairness of the media attacks on Allen and the Biospherians based on their unorthodox lifestyles and lack of scientific credentials. In truth, the B2 creators and participants appear to have been a remarkably talented, committed group; and the scientists they attracted were top-notch, too. But, the fact remains that a man and his followers with resumes more suited to Burning Man than Man on the Moon were responsible for creating a $200 million project with the stated objective of space colonization – and convincing a billionaire and several respected scientific institutions, this University among them, to commit their resources to it. The commitment to creative vision, not to mention the sheer chutzpah of that, is mind-boggling.
Somewhere at the other end of the creativity spectrum lies a woman I met last December in Amarillo, Texas. This woman – we’ll call her Martha -- spent most of her previous two decades as a fundamentalist Christian missionary in far Eastern Europe. Now, through happenstance and in-laws (which may be synonymous), I found myself in her living room having tea and cookies as she asked me what I did. It was when I told her about my MFA program that she asked me, “What does ‘creative writing’ mean?”
I’ve thought about it a lot lately, and I would love to have said something witty or profound. Or maybe I could have turned it back on her and said, “You tell me.” As it is I explained that I was in a program with different genres, including poetry and non-fiction, and that my focus was fiction.
“What do you mean by ‘fiction?’” she responded.
I paused, not sure if she was putting me on or not. “Ah, fiction is made-up, not true.” She asked me for an example. I said, “I’m working mostly on short stories for now, maybe novels and screenplays later.”
“What do you mean by ‘novel?’”
It was clear to me from earlier conversations that Martha was at least normally intelligent. So I tried to imagine that she was incredibly naïve, like a cloistered nun, or maybe George of the Jungle. But there was something about the way she kept smiling without making any attempt to suggest answers that made me feel defensive. She had the strange quality of being inquisitive without seeming curious.
Everyone else in the room was looking at me, and I stifled an urge to give my wife the “Is it me?” look. “A novel is a type of book, a long fictional story," I said.
“Hmmm, that sounds so smart,” said Martha, pronouncing smart like it was exotic and vaguely indecent, like it was Shakira’s ass. “I’m not that smart. Why don’t people just say ‘book’ – why do they have to sound so smart?” She kept smiling the whole time.
My department head, Aurelie Sheehan, is working on a novel. I met with her last week to talk about some of my ideas for this B2 writing project, and when I was leaving I asked her how her work was going. She paused and seemed to leave the room for a moment to think. “It’s like an alternate reality,” she paused again. “Which is good.”
I agree. That sounds good.
Create: (according to my Webster’s New Universal Unabridged): “1. to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes.”
Create, creative, creation. My graduate program, this blog space are touted as creative writing. Last December I met a woman who asked me what that meant. I don’t think I ever gave her a satisfactory answer. In some ways, I’ve never struggled so much to feel creative, in others, I’ve never been so clear in my ability to create.
‘Something unique that would not naturally evolve.’ I’ve been reading a lot more about the original Biosphere 2 project; Rebecca Reider’s book, Dreaming the Biosphere, and Jane Poynter’s, The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2. The more I read, the more I come to view Biosphere 2’s existence as a creative (rather than scientific) achievement. Then again, Jane Poynter writes: “If you ask twenty people who were part of the project what the aim of it was, you would receive close to twenty different responses.” (p. 103). And also, “The Biosphere was a big Rorschach test with everyone seeing through his or her own lens.” (p. 65).
At Biosphere 2’s inception, the founders and the mainstream press frequently invoked the US manned space flight programs for comparison. It may have seemed grandiose, but the original B2 mission was in many ways a greater testament to the power of a creative vision than the lunar landings. For one thing, B2 was more ambitious technically and scientifically – the ultimate goal was a self-sustaining miniature Earth capable of being exported to other planets. For another, B2 was created and controlled by John Allen. He had a Harvard MBA and an engineering degree, but his previous two decades had been mostly spent leading a series of communes and a traveling theater troupe; the Mercury and Apollo programs were directed by actual rocket scientists. Both the books I mentioned above devote whole sections to exposing the unfairness of the media attacks on Allen and the Biospherians based on their unorthodox lifestyles and lack of scientific credentials. In truth, the B2 creators and participants appear to have been a remarkably talented, committed group; and the scientists they attracted were top-notch, too. But, the fact remains that a man and his followers with resumes more suited to Burning Man than Man on the Moon were responsible for creating a $200 million project with the stated objective of space colonization – and convincing a billionaire and several respected scientific institutions, this University among them, to commit their resources to it. The commitment to creative vision, not to mention the sheer chutzpah of that, is mind-boggling.
Somewhere at the other end of the creativity spectrum lies a woman I met last December in Amarillo, Texas. This woman – we’ll call her Martha -- spent most of her previous two decades as a fundamentalist Christian missionary in far Eastern Europe. Now, through happenstance and in-laws (which may be synonymous), I found myself in her living room having tea and cookies as she asked me what I did. It was when I told her about my MFA program that she asked me, “What does ‘creative writing’ mean?”
I’ve thought about it a lot lately, and I would love to have said something witty or profound. Or maybe I could have turned it back on her and said, “You tell me.” As it is I explained that I was in a program with different genres, including poetry and non-fiction, and that my focus was fiction.
“What do you mean by ‘fiction?’” she responded.
I paused, not sure if she was putting me on or not. “Ah, fiction is made-up, not true.” She asked me for an example. I said, “I’m working mostly on short stories for now, maybe novels and screenplays later.”
“What do you mean by ‘novel?’”
It was clear to me from earlier conversations that Martha was at least normally intelligent. So I tried to imagine that she was incredibly naïve, like a cloistered nun, or maybe George of the Jungle. But there was something about the way she kept smiling without making any attempt to suggest answers that made me feel defensive. She had the strange quality of being inquisitive without seeming curious.
Everyone else in the room was looking at me, and I stifled an urge to give my wife the “Is it me?” look. “A novel is a type of book, a long fictional story," I said.
“Hmmm, that sounds so smart,” said Martha, pronouncing smart like it was exotic and vaguely indecent, like it was Shakira’s ass. “I’m not that smart. Why don’t people just say ‘book’ – why do they have to sound so smart?” She kept smiling the whole time.
My department head, Aurelie Sheehan, is working on a novel. I met with her last week to talk about some of my ideas for this B2 writing project, and when I was leaving I asked her how her work was going. She paused and seemed to leave the room for a moment to think. “It’s like an alternate reality,” she paused again. “Which is good.”
I agree. That sounds good.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
A Scientist Communication Trainer
In my first post I talked about the increasing importance to scientists of communicating their work more effectively to non-scientists. Then a few weeks ago, I saw that U of A and Biosphere 2, as part of ‘Earth Week,’ were sponsoring a lecture and movie screening by a man named Randy Olson. Olson is a Harvard-educated marine biologist-turned filmmaker and now author. His new book, Don’t Be Such a Scientist, attempts to teach scientists -- and perhaps all rational, well-educated people – how to get their points across without turning people off. His new movie, which screened at the Loft on March 31, is called Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy. Book and movie are theory and practice in Olson’s curriculum.
I fought a sell-out crowd at the Loft to see the movie. And yes, I went, in part, because of my internship with Biosphere 2, but I probably wouldn’t have gone if not for the title -- A Global Warming Comedy – and from a source considered acceptable to appear at Earth Week. This was intriguing. Olson would say this is the art of “arousal.” In his book he offers a lot of binary formulas; “arousal” and “fulfillment” is one of them. These are the keys, he says, to effective communication. Arousal and fulfillment are why stories are so much more powerful than, say, dissertations. No matter how important the discovery, you must arouse, or motivate, people to read about it. Advertising is as important as the message itself, says Olson, and scientists don’t like to admit this. In Don't Be Such a Scientist, Olson tells several cautionary tales to support this hypothesis, including the story of penicillin. Most people know that British scientist Alexander Fleming is credited with having discovered penicillin. And indeed, Fleming published his findings on the anti-bacterial properties of a certain blue-green mold in 1929. But that's all he did. He apparently published his findings in an obscure academic journal and made no effort to promote the importance of his findings or even to connect with other researchers who may have been able to help develop penicillin. It wasn't until the early 1940's when more purposeful scientists discovered Fleming's work that penicillin was developed as the first anti-biotic. Olson asks, how many lives might have been saved if Fleming had believed in advertising?
Olson also cites Malcolm Gladwell from Blink for the importance of quick first impressions and relates a lot of what he learned about story-telling from the USC film school. But most of what he says boils down to the notiont that scientists need to worry more about style and less about substance if they want people to listen.
What was particularly interesting to me about Olson’s movie Sizzle and his comments afterward were that he is clearly interested in bridging some of the divides in the country, the separate circles I spoke about last time. In Sizzle as well as his previous movie, a film about the evolution-intelligent design debate called Flock of Dodos, he pits scientists vs. anti-scientists. In fact, one of my criticisms of Sizzle was that he gave the contrarians too much representation, giving their views a disproportionate time on screen compared to the actual percentage of legitimate scientists who are global warming skeptics. But he does something neither Al Gore nor Fox News would do – he allows each side to speak, and even though it’s pretty clear he believes in the mainstream science view of global warming, he doesn’t obviously stack the deck against the contrarians or play Michael Moore gotcha tricks.
I got a chance to talk to Olson one-on-one after the screening. When I mentioned my concern about too much face time for the contrarians he said he was aware of it but he felt that people watching the film would see that the mainstream scientists were more consistent and credible -- and not because of content so much as nonverbal cues. The contrarians were weird and their mannerisms didn't project confidence. On the other hand, Olson said that people who considered themselves undecided or neutral on the evolution/intelligent design debate before watching Flock of Dodos, tended to side with the intelligent designers after watching the movie – because they were simply more likable. The scientists came across as strident and condescending. The scientists got worked up and frustrated, and this pissed people off. So Olson thinks that the key for scientists is to work on being more likeable, better storytellers, and more respectful of people on the other side.
I am not sure society is ready yet for scientists to be the glib story-tellers that Olson envisions. One of his central points – another binary reduction – is that there are two kinds of error in communications: accuracy errors and “interest” errors. Scientists invariably prefer to make ‘interest’ errors over ‘accuracy’ errors, whereas good story-tellers almost always sacrifice accuracy for interest. It comes with the territory, the nature of how scientists are trained, but Olson says scientists must alter their strict bias toward interest errors or they will not have anyone hear what they are saying.
I’m not so sure this will work the way Olson suggests, however. As I mentioned last time, the Biosphere 2 experiment was perceived as a failure, in part because they had a bias toward story-telling over accuracy. People – the media, mainstream public – held the scientists to a different standard. Yes, Olson is right, we’d like all our scientists to be as likeable as Carl Sagan, but would Carl Sagan have made it if he didn’t have the scientists aura of superior accuracy? I’m not so sure it’s going to be easy for scientists to become entertainers and successful talk show debaters by simply becoming better story-tellers. Would it hurt to learn some of the tenets in Don’t Be Such a Scientist? Probably not. Those professors’ students would appreciate it if nothing else. But it’s a tough box that scientists find themselves in right now – and I’m not sure they can just gussy themselves up for the Blink world of style over substance and solve the problem.
Nonetheless, I think there is something important and valuable in Olson's approach. In his movies it feels at times like he is just a fight promoter who wants to make sure that the main contenders actually get in the ring together. In his book, he’s in the scientists’ corner as a trainer. But in person, he was respectful and good-humored with everyone, including a vocal minority of global warming skeptics. He didn't seem to get frustrated with them, even though he conceded later he thought their lines of attack were ill-reasoned and based on inaccurate information. This equanimity in the face of attacks and disagreement with his scienctific values certainly seemed to be Olson practicing what he preaches, but I gathered there was more to it than intentional restraint or adherence to style. As Olson explained, he grew up in Kansas in a conservative Republican family. He is able to remember that the people who disagree with some of his fundamental principles as a scientist are still people he cares about. And to me, this was his most impressive statement.
One hindrance to communicating science that is illustrated in Sizzle but not directly addressed in Olson's book is that people in the US increasingly see facts as relative. It used to be that people seemed to have some basic societal agreement on facts; they trusted mainstream science and journalism, but they disagreed on politics. Now politics determines facts. So how does one deal with this problem that every statement is treated as opinion and everyone has one? He agreed it was a tough question, and he didn’t have a ready answer. But perhaps there are no answers, only approaches, and the one he demonstrated may well be a good one to emulate.
Other stuff ...
Errata: I mentioned in my first post that Mitch and Fenton had just joined the choir last year. I understand now that Mitch has been with the University choir for several years. I apologize for this 'accuracy error.'
Announcement: Mitch’s wife, Barney, gave birth to a healthy baby girl on March 22nd -- congratulations and welcome Evelyn Raie!
I fought a sell-out crowd at the Loft to see the movie. And yes, I went, in part, because of my internship with Biosphere 2, but I probably wouldn’t have gone if not for the title -- A Global Warming Comedy – and from a source considered acceptable to appear at Earth Week. This was intriguing. Olson would say this is the art of “arousal.” In his book he offers a lot of binary formulas; “arousal” and “fulfillment” is one of them. These are the keys, he says, to effective communication. Arousal and fulfillment are why stories are so much more powerful than, say, dissertations. No matter how important the discovery, you must arouse, or motivate, people to read about it. Advertising is as important as the message itself, says Olson, and scientists don’t like to admit this. In Don't Be Such a Scientist, Olson tells several cautionary tales to support this hypothesis, including the story of penicillin. Most people know that British scientist Alexander Fleming is credited with having discovered penicillin. And indeed, Fleming published his findings on the anti-bacterial properties of a certain blue-green mold in 1929. But that's all he did. He apparently published his findings in an obscure academic journal and made no effort to promote the importance of his findings or even to connect with other researchers who may have been able to help develop penicillin. It wasn't until the early 1940's when more purposeful scientists discovered Fleming's work that penicillin was developed as the first anti-biotic. Olson asks, how many lives might have been saved if Fleming had believed in advertising?
Olson also cites Malcolm Gladwell from Blink for the importance of quick first impressions and relates a lot of what he learned about story-telling from the USC film school. But most of what he says boils down to the notiont that scientists need to worry more about style and less about substance if they want people to listen.
What was particularly interesting to me about Olson’s movie Sizzle and his comments afterward were that he is clearly interested in bridging some of the divides in the country, the separate circles I spoke about last time. In Sizzle as well as his previous movie, a film about the evolution-intelligent design debate called Flock of Dodos, he pits scientists vs. anti-scientists. In fact, one of my criticisms of Sizzle was that he gave the contrarians too much representation, giving their views a disproportionate time on screen compared to the actual percentage of legitimate scientists who are global warming skeptics. But he does something neither Al Gore nor Fox News would do – he allows each side to speak, and even though it’s pretty clear he believes in the mainstream science view of global warming, he doesn’t obviously stack the deck against the contrarians or play Michael Moore gotcha tricks.
I got a chance to talk to Olson one-on-one after the screening. When I mentioned my concern about too much face time for the contrarians he said he was aware of it but he felt that people watching the film would see that the mainstream scientists were more consistent and credible -- and not because of content so much as nonverbal cues. The contrarians were weird and their mannerisms didn't project confidence. On the other hand, Olson said that people who considered themselves undecided or neutral on the evolution/intelligent design debate before watching Flock of Dodos, tended to side with the intelligent designers after watching the movie – because they were simply more likable. The scientists came across as strident and condescending. The scientists got worked up and frustrated, and this pissed people off. So Olson thinks that the key for scientists is to work on being more likeable, better storytellers, and more respectful of people on the other side.
I am not sure society is ready yet for scientists to be the glib story-tellers that Olson envisions. One of his central points – another binary reduction – is that there are two kinds of error in communications: accuracy errors and “interest” errors. Scientists invariably prefer to make ‘interest’ errors over ‘accuracy’ errors, whereas good story-tellers almost always sacrifice accuracy for interest. It comes with the territory, the nature of how scientists are trained, but Olson says scientists must alter their strict bias toward interest errors or they will not have anyone hear what they are saying.
I’m not so sure this will work the way Olson suggests, however. As I mentioned last time, the Biosphere 2 experiment was perceived as a failure, in part because they had a bias toward story-telling over accuracy. People – the media, mainstream public – held the scientists to a different standard. Yes, Olson is right, we’d like all our scientists to be as likeable as Carl Sagan, but would Carl Sagan have made it if he didn’t have the scientists aura of superior accuracy? I’m not so sure it’s going to be easy for scientists to become entertainers and successful talk show debaters by simply becoming better story-tellers. Would it hurt to learn some of the tenets in Don’t Be Such a Scientist? Probably not. Those professors’ students would appreciate it if nothing else. But it’s a tough box that scientists find themselves in right now – and I’m not sure they can just gussy themselves up for the Blink world of style over substance and solve the problem.
Nonetheless, I think there is something important and valuable in Olson's approach. In his movies it feels at times like he is just a fight promoter who wants to make sure that the main contenders actually get in the ring together. In his book, he’s in the scientists’ corner as a trainer. But in person, he was respectful and good-humored with everyone, including a vocal minority of global warming skeptics. He didn't seem to get frustrated with them, even though he conceded later he thought their lines of attack were ill-reasoned and based on inaccurate information. This equanimity in the face of attacks and disagreement with his scienctific values certainly seemed to be Olson practicing what he preaches, but I gathered there was more to it than intentional restraint or adherence to style. As Olson explained, he grew up in Kansas in a conservative Republican family. He is able to remember that the people who disagree with some of his fundamental principles as a scientist are still people he cares about. And to me, this was his most impressive statement.
One hindrance to communicating science that is illustrated in Sizzle but not directly addressed in Olson's book is that people in the US increasingly see facts as relative. It used to be that people seemed to have some basic societal agreement on facts; they trusted mainstream science and journalism, but they disagreed on politics. Now politics determines facts. So how does one deal with this problem that every statement is treated as opinion and everyone has one? He agreed it was a tough question, and he didn’t have a ready answer. But perhaps there are no answers, only approaches, and the one he demonstrated may well be a good one to emulate.
Other stuff ...
Errata: I mentioned in my first post that Mitch and Fenton had just joined the choir last year. I understand now that Mitch has been with the University choir for several years. I apologize for this 'accuracy error.'
Announcement: Mitch’s wife, Barney, gave birth to a healthy baby girl on March 22nd -- congratulations and welcome Evelyn Raie!
Monday, March 15, 2010
Introductions
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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