The Philosophy of Science

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.

King of Kings

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.  Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions era
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.  Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
–– Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Foray into Poetry

In tenth grade, my closest friend and I spent our entire fifth period passing poetry back and forth in scrawled cursive.  We littered the pages with enchanting snippets of hidden wisdom and buried passion:

She howl’d aloud, “I am on fire within.

There comes no murmur of reply.

What is it that will take away my sin,

And save me lest I die?”

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Palace of Art"

When I have seen by

Time’s fell hand defac’d

The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d,

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage

—Shakespeare, “Sonnet 64”

My whole life long I learn’d to love.

This hour my utmost art I prove

And speak my passion—heaven or hell?

She will not give me heaven?

’Tis well!

—Robert Browning, “One Way of Love”

We spent hours memorizing our favorites out of the chapter subtitles in The Infernal Devices, curled them in the margins of our notes, traded, and memorized each other's.  I, as a hoarder, have notes dating back to as early as third grade, and so naturally these sonnet-filled books from sophomore history class resurface occasionally and I smile at my own messy cursive and my friend's gorgeously consistent loops, once again stacking the poems in neat piles at the front of my mind and rehearsing them when it suits me.

The Sound of Snowfall

He thought he could almost hear the snow falling outside.  He could not, but he could hear the silence where it fell. –– Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls)

The Sound of Books

I'm picky about a good place to read: too much noise or too much silence distracts me, as do light playing on the page or through my fingers, another person within my line of sight, and thoughts of what's for dinner.  (Honestly, how do I finish reading anything?)  But I think I've unearthed the perfect spot: Barnes and Noble (let the angels sing).  Often hand-in-hand with a Starbucks, so the scent of caffeine and creamer partially permeate the store, mixing with what you already know is one of my favorite scents--ink on paper.  I like kneeling down in a secluded aisle and just picking books up, reading the first page and perhaps the plot summary, and carefully tucking them back in among the rest.  The more books that pass through my hands, the happier I feel.  My favorite are the special edition hardbacks of the complete works of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens or who else--the kind that have ridges on the spines and intricate lettering with sparkly filigree.  The kind that should decorate the walls of a Disney princesses' chambers and instead I want decorating my own.  I always like to stop in the notebook section and examine the petite calendars complete with antique floral patterns on their covers and red ribbons to hold your place.  I like the sassy post-it notes and electronic dictionary bookmarks.  And I like that everyone is quiet and hidden away in their own corner of the store, but all know the others are there.  I like being surrounded by people, both those physically present and those present in the books they wrote, but not having the pressure of talking to any of them: it is up to me to approach a book, say "how do you do," and then decide whether to take it home.  Most of all, I love the illusion that all the shelves upon shelves of volumes are mine, at least for a couple of hours.

Temporary

Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks. –– Dottie Walters

I Was Wrong

I've taken a class on war.  This is not to say I am familiar with every facet of the subject--I am, in fact, severely lacking in the experience department, and therefore unqualified to state anything regarding it as fact--but I am no longer ignorant of the topic, either.  This class, a seminar literature course called War and Peace (when asked where the peace came in after a couple of introductory movies, Saving Private Ryan and The Deer Hunter, our teacher told us that our classroom represented the peace aspect), had a significant impact on me.  However, I had previously believed its impact to have been more substantial than I now know it to be.  I went into that class considering war an abomination created by all that is wrong with human nature: that it was our darkest side revealing itself in the most immoral ways.  I saw it as unnecessary.  I still, to some extent, believe in the former; what changed is my belief in the latter.  I think (in very limited cases, mind you) that war IS necessary.  But, I also think that war is overused: my teacher told me that Saving Private Ryan was, to him, the closest one could get to being in war without volunteering for the armed forces; I barely made it through Saving Private Ryan, and that is, of course, not really comparable to the true experience.  Knowing how appalling many of the events of that movie were, and taking into account that it is still only a movie, I think it unforgivably rash to enter a war as anything other than the last resort, and with no less than a means, a justifiable motive, and a plan.  But more than that, what I find I cannot forgive is those who not only see war as necessary, but morally right.  The ends, in my opinion, must be morally right in order to justify the means, but the means will never be moral.

So, I give in: I believe killing can be necessary.  But I will never believe it is right.