Wordsmith
One of the tasks of a writer is: to give forms to the formless, perhaps even primal, instincts, urges, train of thought, notion, that lurk behind the curtain of the unconscious, at the back of one's mind. Good writers make you go: "Wow, my thoughts exactly." Deep inside, the reader already knows and the writer simply crystallises the knowledge into cluster of words. It sounds Jungian, but I do believe the collective unconscious exists, in one form or another.
Unfortunately, this talent to crystallise comes at a cost. Almost all writers are afflicted with some sort of mental problem; think of poets and their associated tragedies. This is not suprising: literature verily reflects humanity, and the curator of the knowledge of humanity, the writer, stands in the midst of it all, the vortex of which may corrode the soul. I said 'may', because there is another possibility which is the very opposite: it may temper the soul. Wilfred Owen drank from his bitter cup -- his experience of war -- that's the source of his art. There were other writers who got drunk from their own tragedies and took their own lives. But there are also those who swallowed the poison and rose up stronger. To the writer, the act of writing may be itself therapeutic, redemptive even. Their darkness precipitated from the hearts to the pages. The grief percolating between the lines.
But they are they; and it remains to be seen what will become of the rest of us, each a writer of our own lives. Will we join the ranks of the tragic or otherwise? Yes, each of us should consider himself a wordsmith; it's not the matter of being a professional or a dilletante, but simply being one is part of being human. Your words will outlast you, outlive you, and I do mean 'outlive' you in terms of vivacity:
I asked the servant Leo why it was that artists sometimes appeared to be only half-alive, while their creations seemed so irrefutably alive. Leo looked at me, surprised at my question. Then he released the poodle he was holding in his arms and said: "It is just the same with mothers. When they have borne their children and given them their milk and beauty and strength, they themselves become invisible, and no one asks about them anymore."
-- Hermann Hesse, The Journey to The East
So, back to writing, shall we?
On Kierkegaard's Repetition
So once again the girl was not an actuality but a reflexion of motions within him and an incitement of them. The girl has enormous importance, and he will never be able to forget her, but her importance lies not in herself but in her relation to him. She is to him, so to speak, the border of his being, but such a relation is not erotic. From a religious point of view, one could say it as if God used this girl to capture him, and yet the girl herself is not an actuality but is like the lace-winged fly with which a hook is baited. I am completely convinced that he does not know the girl at all, although he has been attached to her and she probably has never been out of his thoughts since then. She is the girl—period. Whether, more concretely, she is this or that, the loveliness, the loveableness, the faithfullness, the sacrificial love for whose sake one risks everything and sets heaven and earth in motion—that never enters his head....He bit the chain that bound him, but the more his passion seethed, the more ecstatic his song, the more tender his talk, the tighter the chain. It was impossible for him to create a real relationship out of this misunderstanding; it would, in fact, leave her at the mercy of a perpetual fraud. To explain this confusing error to her, that she was merely the visible form, while his thoughts, his soul, sought something else that he attributed to her—this would hurt her so deeply that his pride rose up in mutiny against it. It is contemptible to delude and seduce a girl, but it is even more contemptible to forsake her in such a way that one does not even become a scoundrel but makes a brilliant retreat by palming her off with the explanation that she was not the ideal and by comforting her with the idea that she was one’s muse.-- Repetition, S.A. Kierkegaard
The above extract is the crux of Repetition. It tells of a young man who is in love, yet agonises over it. But why? Yes, initially he fell in love with the girl, but thereafter he realised that the girl is a trigger of sorts, that awakened the 'motions within him', or what Constantin called it later, 'poetic awakening'. You can say that he fell in love with Love itself, namely the embodiment of all the poetic qualities of erotic love: the thrill and palpitations, the devotion, the sacrificial.
No one is ever safe from being in the young man's shoes. In fact, Repetition itself was written autobiographically to some extent. Be wary, then, of falling in love with love; it will only bring you agony.
Falling in love with love is falling for make-believe
Falling in love with love is playing the fool
-- Falling in Love with Love; Lorentz Hart, Richard Rodgers; sung by Frank Sinatra
Murakami on the Poolside
That day I woke up a little late. My head still cloudy from excess of sleep, I showered, then made a cup of double-dose coffee (somehow one packet of instant coffee wasn’t enough nowadays). I sat at the lounge, absorbing caffeine and morning news. I sorted out the plan for the day: I would go to the campus sports complex for a swim. I mulled over this a little while. I was having doubts whether since the previous day had been a public holiday, so the pool might not be open. I decided I should still go, carrying some books so I could go to the library to study – that’s the contingency plan, and in any case exams were pretty near.
So I started out. It was an hour before noon but the sun was not out. It looked like it was going to rain, but my mind was already made up. On the hour-long journey, I read the book I was currently reading: a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami. I had just finished one novel by Murakami and decided to read his other works. In no time I reached the sports complex.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the pool was open. My usual routine when I swim alone was to swim 60 lengths for endurance training. For club training, there were more sprints which can quickly exhaust you. With leisurely pace, I could usually do it under one and a half hour. As I stretched, I prepared myself mentally. The length itself was not a problem – usually the first few tens of laps feel draining all right but after that you will not feel anything much – you would even feel time is standing still, a taste of eternity, if you will. The problem was that usually my mind tends to wander and I don’t want to think about depressing things in the middle of a swim.
At the end of fourteenth lap I heard the lifeguard’s whistle. Oh no, I thought, must be lightning alert. A thunder growled far away to confirm my suspicion. I sat at a bench near the lockers and the water cooler, not sure whether to call off the swim altogether or to wait. I decided I would wait. The droplets of water started to come down. It was not particularly a heavy downpour, but it was steady and the sky was particularly dark with thunder clouds. After a few tens of minutes some of the swimmers gave up and went to shower. I waited until I was more or less dry and then picked up Murakami from the locker to read.
Murakami’s works are quite unusual, though perhaps it is that very novelty that appeals to people. Some of his works have no moral of the story. It was just an episode of someone’s life, with nothing particularly interesting that the reader should learn about or philosophical questions to think about. They rarely have conspicuous conflicts, followed by steep rising climaxes and resolve – most of the time it was flat. As someone trained in literature, I found his works refreshing.
The slices of life Murakami describe themselves may not be very interesting but his style of writing has the no-pretense, honest quality to it, his meanings not buried in complex metaphors, which only adds to its realism, the impression that the happenings may very well happen right then at someplace.
There is also quite often-recurring motif of existentialism, like you feel the you you see in the mirror is not the real you. I suppose everyone feels a little bit like that sometimes, and the way he describes it flows fluently. I do feel like that sometimes. In a swimming event, for example, I would psyche myself that the one swimming is no longer the limited I but someone else. Then the I that observes the other I will feel distant like a faraway echo of ages past.
After sometime, I arrived at Firefly. After few sentences I realised that that short story must have been the one expanded to the novel Norwegian Wood, which was the one I had read before. I hesitated for a second whether to skip the short story but I read on. As I said, Murakami’s powers lie not in the plot but in his descriptions. I re-tasted being in Watanabe Toru, though somehow this Toru felt a little different. After a while I realised that all the names of the characters were missing, as if they were still rough sketches blurred at the edges. I recalled the particular scene about the firefly, though I felt it had no real significance in the novel. In the short story, though, the firefly scene was in the spotlight and a little carried away by the story, I was swept with a wave of loneliness.
Right before the very last paragraph, I happened to look up and saw a swimmer in the pool. Apparently there was no more lightning. I replaced the bookmark and stored away the book. When I walked away from the lockers, the sky cleared up and the sun came out from its hiding place. I plunged into the water. As I glided, I saw at the bottom of the pool my own shadow tangled with brilliant strands of light.
So I started out. It was an hour before noon but the sun was not out. It looked like it was going to rain, but my mind was already made up. On the hour-long journey, I read the book I was currently reading: a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami. I had just finished one novel by Murakami and decided to read his other works. In no time I reached the sports complex.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the pool was open. My usual routine when I swim alone was to swim 60 lengths for endurance training. For club training, there were more sprints which can quickly exhaust you. With leisurely pace, I could usually do it under one and a half hour. As I stretched, I prepared myself mentally. The length itself was not a problem – usually the first few tens of laps feel draining all right but after that you will not feel anything much – you would even feel time is standing still, a taste of eternity, if you will. The problem was that usually my mind tends to wander and I don’t want to think about depressing things in the middle of a swim.
At the end of fourteenth lap I heard the lifeguard’s whistle. Oh no, I thought, must be lightning alert. A thunder growled far away to confirm my suspicion. I sat at a bench near the lockers and the water cooler, not sure whether to call off the swim altogether or to wait. I decided I would wait. The droplets of water started to come down. It was not particularly a heavy downpour, but it was steady and the sky was particularly dark with thunder clouds. After a few tens of minutes some of the swimmers gave up and went to shower. I waited until I was more or less dry and then picked up Murakami from the locker to read.
Murakami’s works are quite unusual, though perhaps it is that very novelty that appeals to people. Some of his works have no moral of the story. It was just an episode of someone’s life, with nothing particularly interesting that the reader should learn about or philosophical questions to think about. They rarely have conspicuous conflicts, followed by steep rising climaxes and resolve – most of the time it was flat. As someone trained in literature, I found his works refreshing.
The slices of life Murakami describe themselves may not be very interesting but his style of writing has the no-pretense, honest quality to it, his meanings not buried in complex metaphors, which only adds to its realism, the impression that the happenings may very well happen right then at someplace.
There is also quite often-recurring motif of existentialism, like you feel the you you see in the mirror is not the real you. I suppose everyone feels a little bit like that sometimes, and the way he describes it flows fluently. I do feel like that sometimes. In a swimming event, for example, I would psyche myself that the one swimming is no longer the limited I but someone else. Then the I that observes the other I will feel distant like a faraway echo of ages past.
After sometime, I arrived at Firefly. After few sentences I realised that that short story must have been the one expanded to the novel Norwegian Wood, which was the one I had read before. I hesitated for a second whether to skip the short story but I read on. As I said, Murakami’s powers lie not in the plot but in his descriptions. I re-tasted being in Watanabe Toru, though somehow this Toru felt a little different. After a while I realised that all the names of the characters were missing, as if they were still rough sketches blurred at the edges. I recalled the particular scene about the firefly, though I felt it had no real significance in the novel. In the short story, though, the firefly scene was in the spotlight and a little carried away by the story, I was swept with a wave of loneliness.
Right before the very last paragraph, I happened to look up and saw a swimmer in the pool. Apparently there was no more lightning. I replaced the bookmark and stored away the book. When I walked away from the lockers, the sky cleared up and the sun came out from its hiding place. I plunged into the water. As I glided, I saw at the bottom of the pool my own shadow tangled with brilliant strands of light.
And time stood still.
Deliverance
Among the many Christmas songs, this particular line leaves a deep impression on me:
So, let me deliver the Christmas greetings to fellow Christians:
Mary did you know?
...
This child that you've delivered
will soon deliver you.
-- Mark Lowry, Mary Did You Know?
So, let us remember amidst all these Christmas celebrations -- we always think that the world delivered Jesus, when it's really the other way around: Jesus once delivered the world into existence and He will deliver the world once again into salvation.
So, let me deliver the Christmas greetings to fellow Christians:
Jesus was once delivered in a stable,
of uncomfort, of uncleanness
But this year
May He be delivered in your heart
Knowing that He will deliver you someday
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You could almost hear it. The collective sigh of chemists all over the world, I mean, over similar sentiments as above. Of course as a chemist-in-training I should say something in apologia. Though as soon as I said that, I realised that the epistemological perspective of the field is nowhere found in my training. So treat this piece as what I thought I knew about chemistry at the meta-knowledge level, and why I found the aforementioned comment distasteful, to say the least.
I will begin with definitions, like all good epistemological pieces should. To be sure, physics is the study of physical things and how they behave, in other words, the physical laws. Technically then, chemistry is certainly a subsidiary of physics, but so is biology, geology, climatology and every other subject studying the tangible, because the tangible obey physical laws. Such classification then becomes useless, the field too bloated, which defeats the purpose of classification in the first place.
As such, we must recognise the two kinds of classifications here: the technical one and the utilitarian one. So, an attempt to unify chemistry under the grand umbrella of physics is technically proper but not useful. Utilitarianism here is of course anthropocentric -- Man is the measure of all things, said Pythagoras. The study of behaviours of valence electrons has implications in the chemical industries -- from paints, fertilisers, cosmetics, foodstuff, to drugs -- that are paramount to our lives that they need a separate category. This is even truer for the engineering fields, the direct spawns of physics, that the industry would benefit from clear distinctions. As important is the utility to the academic learning. The massive amount of knowledge has to be compartmentalised -- the size of the field should be roughly learnable within a four-year bachelor's degree. Imagine if a physics degree also requires you to learn chemistry to the level of the current chemistry degree -- how long would that take, and how useful is that for the learner who doesn't intend to go to grad school? And the utility values to the industry and academia are intertwined. The training during the four-year bachelor's should be at least enough for the learner to have a basic grasp of the field to start out in the industry (or his curiosity piqued enough that he would choose to go to grad school, but that's another story).
Sure, the divisive line blurs when one talks about physical chemistry for example. Does thermodynamics belong to the realm of physics or chemistry? Sticking to utilitarian value, one should resist classification then, and embrace both labels, because, why not? The separate classification of chemistry should serve to make clear; when it does not serve this purpose and potentially misleads instead, then the classification has ceased to have any utility.
In a talk I attended where Aaron Ciechanover, 2004 Nobel laurate in Chemistry, was the speaker, someone, evidently an organic chemist grad student, asked about the role of synthetic chemist in increasingly biological approach in drug industry. He gently rebuked the questioner regarding the absurdity of such division. In short, he lamented the current state of affairs where science departments are so isolatedly fragmented they are not communicating and collaborating with each other. When I think of these things, strangely enough I am reminded of Victor Frankenstein, whom Shelley described as a 'natural philosopher' if my memory serves right, and his creature. That there was a time when the hard sciences are united on a front called natural philosophy, before it has inflated to the the sewing of appendages that barely fit each other, the chimeric monstrosity it is today.
--
Recapitulation so far: It is of utility value to have chemistry as a separate field from physics. This argument may not apply to other fields, so I'm going to offer another argument that applies in all cases. First, if you haven't seen the xkcd's Purity spectrum, go see. Hoewever, as you might suspect, chemistry is not just applied physics, biology is not just applied chemistry and so on. You see, at some point, neuronal connections (biology), neurotransmitters (chemistry), and a bunch of other stuff, as a system, gains enough complexity to become your mind, your consciousness -- picture gestalt, that which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You can't go from physical laws to understanding schizophrenia because the interactions involved have become intricately, impossibly complex to unravel. Such property of complex systems is called emergence, and fields are systems of knowledge. Consequently, while you can say how pure your field is compared to to others, it doesn't make one field any more complex than the others, thus any more worthy of study compared to others.
Bottom line is: dividing sentiments are not useful. There is no point in arguing whose field is more significant. What the scientist must do is make distinctions when necessary and useful, and not make them when unnecessary and useless. Carry on that spark of lightning that keeps a burning fire inside Frankenstein's creature's heart; that keeps him alive, that leads him to search himself, that pushes him to wrestle with his creator, that makes sewn appendages move as one.