Round 2: Critical Paper

Round 2: Critical Paper

I had to return back to Antioch at the end of June to take my second round of classes. Due to work I missed ~2 days worth of class (boo!). My time there was both inspiring and a bit depressing. I learned things, but crave more information than I'm getting. So! I'm going to be reading more =)

In June, per my re-dedication to this project, I finished The Art of the Start (great book on entrepreneurship), Thinking With Type (I'm now inspired to create my own font), Publish Your Own Magazine, Guidebook, or Weekly Newspaper (definitely a more practical guide), and sadly that's it. Though I started about 3 more books - I just need to finish them. I also had to turn in a critical paper...which I of course avoided until the last minute. But! I'm posting it. I want your feedback and thoughts. Since I hate typical essays and loved the idea of lyric essays from my lyric essay class (one of my favorite creative writing classes I took in college), it should hopefully be entertaining. Enjoy!

Lyric Essay: The Artistic Scientist
Diana Hawkins

Introduction

In order to pinpoint what type of writing I would be soliciting from the scientific community for my literary journal, I set out to define science writing. I attempted to do so by asking scientists, both professors and students, for their perspective on the matter. I did not deeply research the subject in the traditional sense – it doesn't matter what academics ponder about in the confines of their offices, it matters what my target audience thinks of when they hear "science writing". The latter will affect my project the most.

After conducting interviews, two conclusions became apparent:
• No one is able to define science writing
• While no one can proffer a definition, they imagine it would be boring.

When the words science writing are uttered, technical papers written in distant third person about lab experiments, readily come to mind. Papers that, despite being relevant, no one can bring themselves to finish because the verbiage is uncreative and tedious. Following the extremely dull was the extremely exciting: science fiction.

A definition of this was easy for my audience to articulate: a fictional work that looks to the cutting edge of science and posits where it will take us. However, this genre is rarely believable to scientists. Star Trek no doubt motivated many young people to major in a scientific field, but once a physics class explains that warp speed is an utter fantasy and/or millennia away from existing, Star Trek loses some of its wonder – it can be explained.

The last form of science writing my audience articulated was more ambiguous. They could only define it as what is in Discover and Popular Science magazine. These are magazines that translate new technologies and scientific discoveries into a language that those without a B.S. in Engineering or Physics can understand. They are entertaining and definitely have a "wow" factor going for them, but they lack grit. Rarely do these magazine articles discuss in detail the sweat that went into creating these new technologies or the science behind them.

Some expanded science writing to include multi-media, songs about thermodynamics and comics about the perils of getting your PhD in engineering were suddenly included in the definition.
Suddenly, this seemed like a failed project idea. No one could define science writing and worse, no one specified the definition *I* had in mind: a non-fiction but humorous or exaggerated version of scientific activities. So, I took a step back and, being a scientist, reevaluated my hypothesis. No one in my audience could define the type of writing I desired to feature in my journal: science writing. Fine. Perhaps my audience could identify the people who would generate this product: artistically creative scientists.

The Artistic Scientist

Wanting to seek out a professional opinion on the matter, I interviewed a current engineering professor at Harvey Mudd College, a professor of English at Scripps College, and the president of Harvey Mudd College. Harvey Mudd College is a technical institution with an emphasis on the humanities. Every graduate is required to not only major in the sciences, but essentially minor in a humanities area. The belief is that this makes for well rounded scientists who will see how their work impacts the community around them. Scripps College is an all female liberal arts college that has a strong arts and English program.

The consensus from all three academics was that scientists are artistically creative and that the humanities and science disciplines overlap greatly. My original target audience for my project was professors; however, the English professor pointed me towards science students. She had taught numerous science majors in her creative writing classes over the years and argued that most were interested in sharing their work in some manner, while professors were typically more focused on their research and might not have time to dedicate to the arts. She was also concerned that the editing process for professors would be a delicate subject – most would be adverse to criticism of their work, while students would be more open. This was a start.
Perhaps the most convincing was the interview with the president of Harvey Mudd College, who said that "creative expression is synergistic with being a scientist/engineer whether in a product based or research role. It is the wave of the future and is growing at the college level. It's coming, but how wide spread or how fast the change will occur I don't know." Not only was my target audience indentified, but it was growing. I asked both the president and the engineering professor if they were artistically creative. They painted and wrote poetry, respectively, and assured me that they had encountered many artistically inclined science students as well. While this was good news, they identified a cultural problem within the sciences: scientists typically don't discuss their artistic side with other scientists.

For what reason, neither could pick out; however, the president did give an example: prior to being at Harvey Mudd, this individual was the dean of engineering at Princeton. While at Princeton, she ran into another science dean who she discovered was also an artist. Just being able to say to one another "I'm an artist" and not have that identity be pushed to the side in favor of a conversation on science or on being a dean was a novel concept. She had finally found a colleague who not only understood what it meant to be an artist, dean, and scientist, but with whom she could collaborate artistically with. The scenario that she described was the main goal of my project: to have artistic scientists interact with each other and to have their artistic side validated in some manner.

The academics had easily identified what I planned to do and who my audience was. More hopeful, I conducted a survey of science students to see how many artistic scientists were really out there.

Definition of Science Writing vs. Redefinition of the Scientist

I received 45 responses to my survey. Despite the fact that 60% of responders were recent college graduates, the results were illuminating. Writing, photography, playing an instrument, and drawing were commonly listed as hobbies and 40% said that they continue to do these things despite working or attending a graduate program. Even more inspiring, 30% share their work with fellow scientists and 26% would do so if they felt the scientific community would be receptive to it. When I described my project idea of creating a literary journal and/or a forum specifically for scientists, they were receptive to my idea and 27 of them wanted to be kept in the loop about how the project unfolds.

Based on these results and the aforementioned interviews, my project's feasibility had significantly increased – despite no one being able to define "science writing." I now realize my project has less to do with what type of writing and artistic material I receive and more with the fact that I will be receiving some type of writing and artistic material from a group of people who have traditionally been told: "you're a scientist, not an artistic type, so stick to what you're good at." I will have proof that scientists are evolving in more than the Darwinian sense – that scientists no longer simply think to themselves "I am a physicist" but rather "I am a physicist and a poet." It is this redefinition that is important, not the definition of an ambiguous term.