I’m fascinated by science the way I'm fascinated by zoo animals: I enjoy spending the day viewing the animals, reading the placards, and then going home for dinner. Scientific discussions are what throw me: I understand science only so far as the textbook explains it to me--abstract argument using what I've learned, while second nature in my english and history classes, is beyond me in this particular field. I retain knowledge like a sponge naturally, and I can understand the information to death, but am somehow incapable of furthering another's discoveries.
I enjoy science on a very basic level: if you explain it to me, I will listen enthusiastically, and it may even spark a few ideas, but they will all be based in the story of evolution and chemical interactions, not the science behind it. I'm a book-driven girl: give me an excellent plot and I'll take it anywhere; give me cold hard facts and I'm lost.
Again, I say I'm not incapable of grasping a concept once a light's placed on it, I just don't know how to place my own light on it; I'm capable of science, but incapable of being a scientist. There's a difference: one is taught to you, the other you discover through extensive research, experimentation, and outside knowledge.
Though I cannot advance the scientific community, I won't deny I love a good intellectually-based argument, and science is full of them: people arguing over the course of evolution, the ancestors of different animals, the purpose of different body parts, and the purport of different body plans; arguing over the possibilities of new elements, and the uses of old ones, and the causes of different chemical reactions. Philosophy is my niche, and it is abundant in science. So, while I am not drawn to the latter, the existence of the former has given me a soft spot for the subject.
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