You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2010.
The Astronomer (Jan Vermeer, c. 1668, Oil on canvas)
Art and Science were once allied disciplines. Leonardo Da Vinci wrote treatises on anatomy and mechanics. Su Song was a poet and calligrapher as well as an engineer, botanist, and zoologist. Sir William Herschel was a musician and a composer before becoming an astronomer. Earlier this month, on the occasion of Sir William Herschel’s birthday, I wrote about how science has become a technical discipline conducted by teams of extensively trained professionals narrowly focused on certain esoteric problems (often on certain aspects of certain problems). Art has travelled a different path, turning its back on universal problems to explore the autobiographic and the intensely personal. Is there anything for art to contribute to science or vice versa? Do visual and performing arts offer something to the world of ideas other than circular self-references?
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (Rembrandt, 1632, oil on canvas)
I don’t know. My family members are mostly scientists, whereas I’m a troubled artist. I always hoped the latter discipline had some aspects of the former (along with a hint of shamanism and a good bit of charming charlatanism). Lately I feel like art is almost all charlatanism.
Art grows ever more solipsistic. Whereas once the artist stood beside the scientist as the two peered together at the marvels of the world (see the images above), today’s artists seem preoccupied with wholly artificial rhythms. The quintessential contemporary artist is obsessed not with humankind’s collective quest to understand the universe, but rather with interpretation of entirely personal idols. The resulting work is edgy and direct. It has the nearly psychotropic power of outsider art (indeed it sometimes seems the only difference between a successful gallery artist with a famous installation piece and a crazy man with a foil monstrosity is a good business manager). Art has become a self-obsessed eccentric uttering vivid maunderings about corporations, stingy lovers, or the fatuous excesses of popular culture.
I’m not sure that I like that sort of thing very much.
Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (Tracey Emin, 1995, tent with textile appliqué)
Art was once like philosophy—a place for the genesis of other disciplines. The sculptor became the anatomist. The painter of birds became a natural scientist and then his works spawned ornithology. However as biology has fissiparated into biochemistry, physiology, ecology, biomechanics, histology, symbiology and a thousand other disciplines each more specific and refined, the hapless artist cannot follow–much less contribute. Artists once tried to keep up with what was happening in science, but today, understanding the broad parameters of scientific endeavor requires painful depth of study. Even politics and history are becoming rarer creative themes as contemporary art travels more towards the autobiographic and the intensely personal.
It has been said that “artists are the eternal adolescents through whom humanity matures.” That is right. Like teenagers, art can takes weird chances. It can run off into a rabbit hole for years only to emerge (comparatively) unscathed with new insights. That’s why art was once so handy and why it now seems so squirrely. Science was also once an adolescent discipline filled with eccentric geniuses and brilliant outsiders, but it has matured into a self-controlled workaholic edifice (which, because of its complexity and immensity is, alas, becoming opaque to outsiders). It would seem that science has no need for art. What can troubled dreamers offer to physicists or nanotechnologists? Science can get somewhere. Artists never really can–but we can always keep asking where we are all going and why.
So to the artists out there, where are we going and why?
Bridge (Jasper Johns, 1997, oil on canvas with objects)
A diorama portraying the seas of the Ordovician Period (from the Exhibit Museum, University of Michigan)
The Ordovician Period, the second period of the Paleozoic Era, took place from 488 to 444 million years ago. During those 44 million years, the landmasses of earth were devoid of life except for hardy lichens, tiny algae, and a few lowly non-vascular plants. The oceans, however, teemed with diverse marine invertebrates and primitive vertebrates. The ecosystems of these great shallow seas seem familiar–with colorful intermeshed filter feeders, grazing herbivores, and swift deadly predators. And yet the creatures are so alien as to make Ordovician reconstructions almost resemble another planet. All of the creatures of a modern coral reef are replaced by strange analogs: the dominant filter feeder were not corals but weird sponge-like animals—the archaeocyathids. The grazers were conodonts and trilobites. The predators were primitive sharks, huge scorpion-like eurypterids, and above all, the nautiloids–for the Ordovician was a time when cephalopods ruled the earth.
Clever mollusks with multiple tentacles, eyes, and a method of jet propulsion, cephalopods had evolved in the Late Cambrian from a snail-like ancestor. Their taxonomy exploded in complexity during the Ordovician period. They also left the shallow continental shelves to range across the pelagic ocean and to descend into the benthic depths. The cephalopods of the Ordovician period were the nautiloids, animals which manipulated a bubble of air within a chambered shell to move up and down the water column. They could grab prey with their many tentacles or retreat into their calcium-based shell. The family quickly exploded in complexity. To quote palaeos.com:
At least ten different orders flourished at this time, all but one appearing for the first time during the early or middle part of the Ordovician. This astonishing diversity included straight, curved, loosely coiled, and tightly coiled shelled types, and even one group (the Ascocerids) that in order to become lighter and more streamlined lost the a large part of their shell altogether. These intelligent carnivorous molluscs replaced the Cambrian Anomalocarids as the dominant life form and top predator of the world’s ocean. The biggest, such as the endocerids, attained huge size; with shells of up to 10 meters in length they were the largest animal that, up until that time, had ever lived.
Some paleontologists have expressed doubts about this magnificent ten meter endocerid shell. But, even so, it is worth remembering that this measurement did not include the tentacles and the head of the creature. These giant orthocones must have been formidable predators, living on nautiloids, eurypterids, and jawless fish. The great monsters are believed to have had weak eyes (and could probably be avoided by staying shell-side of the behemoths). However an even bigger problem faced the tentacled masters of that world.
A giant orthocone
During Ordovician times, the land masses that are now South America, Africa, Madagascar, Antarctica, India, South Asia, and Australia were all joined together as a supercontinent, Gondwanaland. Over tens of millions of years Gondwanaland gradually drifted into the Southern Polar regions of the globe. This resulted in heavy glaciation, which in turn caused rapid deep freezes and sudden interglacial warm periods—in other words, an ice age. This great ice age caused the depth of the ocean to fluctuate wildly which brought a crashing end to the Ordovician and its dominant cephalopods. The mass extinction which ended the Ordovician period was the second worst in the history of the planet (eclipsed only by the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period). More than 60% of marine invertebrates went extinct (including whole families of mollusks). This was but one set back for cephalopods. The family has burgeoned and then crashed many times, but it marked the end of their time as apex predator.
Various Ordovician cephalopods, including the infamous Cameroceras trentonese, shown feeding on a hapless Aphetoceras americanum, while a quartet of Cyclostomiceras cassinense swim by (illustration by Stanton F. Fink).
A Black Turkey, also called the Spanish Black, the Dutch Black, or the Norfolk Black (photo by Mike Walters)
We’ll jump right into this continuation of last week’s two-part post with the the Black Turkey, which was a European variety of domesticated turkey. The original Spanish conquistadors found that the Aztecs had domesticated a subspecies of wild turkey Meleagris gallopavo gallopavo. The ravenous Spaniards carried some of these off (along with every single valuable thing they could find) and took them back to Spain.
Spanish fashion: this is an unusually colorful outfit for Spain during that era.
In accordance with Spanish fashion, the new turkey farmers of the old world selectively bred for all black feathers. The black turkeys spread first to the Netherlands (then under Spanish control) and ultimately throughout Europe.
A Bronze Standard turkey
When English colonists arrived in the New England, they brought black turkeys with them and crossed the European domestic birds with the wild turkeys they found in the forest. The resulting variety had beautiful dark brown feathers with green and copper sheen. These turkeys were called Bronze turkeys and the standard bronze turkey was the most common turkey throughout most of America’s history.
A Buff Turkey in Australia (courtesy of S. Lim)
In their turkey breeding experiments, the colonists also obtained Buff turkeys, one of the original breeds of domestic turkeys in the United States. It was a medium sized bird with lovely dun/beige colored feathers. Unfortunately, due to the ascendancy of larger turkeys, the breed went extinct in 1915. But all was not lost: to quote The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy “Interest in creating a buff colored turkey returned once again the 1940’s. The New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station at Millville initiated a program to develop a small to medium size market turkey. This is one of the few instances where a new variety was developed in a methodical manner….”
The Bourbon Red Turkey
In the early 1800’s a Kentucky poultry farmer named J. F. Barbee crossed Buff, Bronze, and White Holland Turkeys to obtain a pretty roan colored turkey with white wing and tail feathers and light under-feathers. Unfortunately Barbee christened his new breed as “Bourbon Butternuts” and the turkeys did not sell at all. Only later when he renamed the bird “Bourbon reds” did they become popular. Even old-timey Americans were slaves to marketing! The Bourbon red turkey had fallen from favor but lately the breed has become a mainstay of the organic back-yard turkey movement.
That concludes my overview of turkey breeds. I’m sorry I told it out of order, but hopefully you have pieced together the strange tale of Aztecs, Spaniards, 19th century showmen, and factory farms. It is curious how some breeds died out while others burgeoned in accordance to the strange ebb and flow of fashion and taste. It raises curious moral quandaries about the nature of farming. Livestock breeds are created by humans for human convenience and whim. If we don’t eat our farm animals, they vanish (for it is the rare farmer who keeps turkeys purely as a hobby). Isn’t it preferable for these creatures to exist and reproduce even if destiny means that they end their lives as the object of our great annual feast? Perhaps it is best to return to the mindset of the first turkey farmers, the mighty Aztecs, who understood ceremonial annual sacrifice and made it a cornerstone of their culture. Look around you this November and see big proud domestic turkeys staring at you from decorations, television shows, brand labels, and cartoons everywhere. Now think about the red step pyramid, the howling augur, and the flint knife–for you must consume domestic turkeys, the sacred bird of our harvest feast, in order that they may live on. I, for one, am up to such a task! And in addition to looking forward to Thursday dinner, I am eager to see what new varieties of domestic turkeys crop up in this coming century…
Could a bat become a god in Chinese mythology? You need to read the story of the immortal Zhang Guo Lao!
The Chinese underworld illustrates how Chinese mythology portrays existence as a struggle through many different levels of enlightenment. The damned souls of the “dark mansion” (aka hell) are at the bottom of karmic heap. At the top of the pantheon are gods, spirit beings, bodhisattvas, and great magicians. Zhang Guo Lao was one such entity. This mythical figure was apparently based on a one-time real person, a hermit/mystic who lived on Mount Tiáo in Héngzhōu during the Tang dynasty.
One of the oldest of the eight Taoist immortals, Zhang Guo Lao was originally a fangshi (a sort of highly literate gentleman-alchemist). It was this mastery of potions which enabled him to step free of mortality (and he reputedly continues to make magical wines and elixirs from various berries, shrubs, and mushrooms). An eccentric among eccentrics, Zhang Guo Lao would frequently perform strange magic tricks to delight himself and was frequently found sipping from poison flowers and toxic plants for fun. Using his own “drunk kung fu”, he was capable of killing animals and people by pointing at them. Sometimes he would lie around dead and festering for months before leaping up and skipping through the woods.
Zhang Guo Lao
Zhang Guo Lao is known by his long flowing white hair, his extreme age, and by his pet donkey which he is often pictured riding on (backwards of course). This white donkey was no ordinary beast of burden: when Zhang Guo Lao had reached his destination he would fold the wondrous quadruped up into a tiny slip as thin as a slip of paper. He would then keep the donkey in his cap box. When he needed to travel he would reconstitute the creature with a jet of water from his mouth. The ancient immortal also carried a “fish drum. To quote Perceval Yetts’ article The Eight Immortals (published in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society), “[Zhang Guo Lao] is easily recognized by his pao pei, a curious object which to Western eyes resembles a diminutive golfer’s bag containing two clubs. Actually it is a kind of musical instrument called a “fish-drum”, composed of a cylinder, often of bamboo, over one end of which is stretched a piece of prepared fish or snake skin. What look like two projecting golf clubs are the ends of long slips of bamboo used as castanets.”
Earlier, I wrote that Zhang Guo Lao started as a fangshi. This is to ignore his long history of lives before he ascended to near-divinity. Stories say that Zhang Guo Lao claimed to have been a court minister for Emperor Yao in a former life. Additionally, elsewhere in the canon of Taoist literature, Yeh Fa-shan, a fabulist wonder-worker, told a story about how Zhang Guo Lao started out as a bat. Indeed Zhang Guo Lao is frequently portrayed with auspicious bats (a symbol of good fortune) and is said to be able to transform himself into a bat. The idea that a virtuous bat could rise up through the ranks of being–first into a man, then into an emperor’s minister, then into an alchemist/monk, and finally into an immortal quasi-god is a “rags-to-riches” story that Horatio Algiers could never conceive of. Zhang Guo Lao’s path to godhood illustrates that America holds no monopoly on Cinderella dreams.
Thanksgiving is next week! I have already bought a big aluminum platter and some oven bags for the great feast and my hunger is growing sharp…. In the mean time though, I continue to salute the majestic turkey bird–the glorious figure the whole holiday focuses around (albeit in an uncomfortably primitive sacrificed-and-devoured kind of way).
Today’s ambiguously conceived tribute takes the form of a gallery of turkey mascots and logos. It seems quite a lot of them are “Turkey Trot” promotions (apparently that’s some sort of Thanksgiving Day ceremonial run), processed food advertisements, whiskey labels, or creepy sports mascots. In this last category, pride of place certainly belongs to the HokieBird, the fighting turkey mascot of Virginia Tech, my sister’s alma mater. Here he is, first in a formal logo, then below that in a portrait, and finally in a candid shot, horsing around on the sidelines:
I’m never sure how to feel about Virginia Tech (sad, angry, confused, affectionate?) but I love the mascot and I salute their bold choice! Here are some other Turkey Mascots that didn’t necessarily work out as well and then some anonymous turkey costumes.
The Terrifying Mascot for Turkey Hill Dairy
?
The following are food labels/brands. I really like the first one—a turkey trying desperately to sell tofu substitute:
I know I mentioned wild turkey before but I had to include it again because of the dazzling realism.
Here are some random Turkey images–cartoons, and logos from all sorts of different sources (especially “turkey trot” races around the country):
Wrong, wrong, wrong! --ed.
Argh! Also wrong! --ed.
Sigh...
A timeless classic of the season....
I’m closing this grabbag of images with a picture of the national bird of the United States getting angry and jockeying for pride of place with the turkey. Next week I’ll finish listing the different strains of domestic turkey and write some closing thoughts about this national obsession.
In order to practice putting together an artist’s statement, I am going to try to write more posts about contemporary art. Please feel free to chime in with any thoughts or critiques about the style, subject, or conclusions of these little descriptions.
Since I have been writing about the meanings and ramifications of all things gothic, I have decided to start with Steven Assael, a very gifted realist portrait painter working today. A native New Yorker, Assael studied with the contemporary masters of portrait painting to learn the meticulous craft of the great realist painters of yesteryear. He employed hi hard-won skills painting outsider “punk” models with the refined & dignified realism one would usually employ for a university president or a bank executive. The contrast is intriguing and it lends a stolid dignity to the pierced goth figures and faces on the canvas (and a frisson of craziness and excitement to staid academic portrait technique).
Club Kids (Steven Assael, 2001, oil on canvas)
The otherworldiness of Assael’s portraits is an illusion we are meant to see through: the timelessness of the human emotions under the layers of props is part of his theme. If we scrubbed off his club kids’ makeup and hair dye and then gave them cravats, lace, and wigs, they would look just like an 18th century group portrait. Is the difference between a banker and a rebel girl just a bunch of props? Well, on canvas interpreted through the brush of a talented painter, maybe it is.
Assael is self-conscious about using extremely traditional techniques and poses to contemporary ends. When asked about his relationship with modern art he answered, “Modernism has taken a direction toward the North Pole—with nowhere to go, frozen. On the way back we are discovering new territory, using the past as a means of expressing the present. To go forward we must, at times, take a step back and evaluate our position. With progression there is always a [positive, studied] regression”
At Mother, detail (Steven Assael, 2001, Oil, wood panel, canvas and steel)
So is the future of art just the past wearing wild clothes? And is Assael’s underlying classicism at odds with the gothic/emo/punk rebelliousness of the personalities portrayed? There is a melancholic loneliness to Assael’s figures which suggests he understands the paradoxical desire to be outside of popular convention while at the same time being part of a group. His paintings almost seem to have the same paradox. He wishes to be outside of traditional painting while firmly a part of it.
.
Basa in a Bucket
I have been writing a great deal about catfish–by which I mean any of the ray finned fish of the order Siluriforme. There are literally thousands of individual species within this order—all united under the taxonomical rubric by certain shared features such as lack of scales, a well-developed Weberian apparatus, and a reduced gas bladder. Unfortunately, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, only a tiny number of the Siluriformes are actually “catfish”. What’s going on here? Have I been lying to you about all of these fascinating catfish?
No. Here is the ridiculous story of what happened.
During the 1990s, Vietnam began a widespread reform movement towards a market-driven economy. The reforms were an instant and immense success: the number of people living in poverty in Vietnam dropped from 70% of the population to 30% of the population. Vietnam’s standard of living rose dramatically and the nations leaders began courting the United States as both a trade partner and an ally against the rising regional hegemony of China. One of Vietnam’s top exports was basa, freshwater catfish raised quickly and cheaply on fish farms along the tributary rivers of the Mekong. “Basa” can be used to describe several different catfish, usually Pangasius bocourti, Pangasius hypophthalmus, or Pangasius pangasius. These fish are truly omnivorous and their ability to take sips of pure air means huge numbers can be raised in small spaces.
Pangasius
Vietnamese catfish exports to America exploded. Thanks to cheap labor, inexpensive farm techniques (which probably involve a level of abuse to the Mekong river), and superior tasting flesh, basa quickly outcompeted channel catfish from the moribund catfish farms of the American South.
That’s when Catfish Farmers of America (an agricultural lobbying organization) lobbied Mississippi’s then Senator, Trent Lott, to act against the Vietnamese imports. Lott duly appended a rider onto an important appropriations bill. This rider mandated that out of the thousands of catfish types, only the North American Ictaluridae could henceforth be called “catfish”. In the subsequent debate John McCain lashed out at this anti-free trade (and anti-ichthyology) legislation calling it, “a scurrilous campaign against foreign catfish for the most parochial reasons.” Senator Hutchinson of Arkansas, responded (and demonstrated a deplorable lack of taxonomical savvy) by stating that, “Vietnamese Basa is no more related to the Southern catfish than a cat is to a cow.” [It is well known that cows are even toed ungulates and hence members of the order Artiodactyla, whereas cats are a member of an entirely different order of mammals, the Carnivora. Both basa and chanel cats are in the same order of fish.]. Unfortunately the Senator’s failure to grasp biology was no bar to passing the anti-trade legislation and, in 2003, Congress passed laws preventing all non-Ictaluridae catfish from being labelled as catfish (as well as imposing additional tariffs on Vietnamese basa).
Say what you like about anti-trade agricultural lobbyists, but they have a neat logo and a great website.
There was a silver lining for Vietnamese fish exporters: basa is completely delicious and has continued to outsell “catfish”. Indeed the Vietnamese began to rake in windfall profits because, despite punitive tariffs, their product was still cheaper than American catfish which soared in cost due to increased corn prices (corn, a catfish feedstock, became more expensive thanks to Congressionally mandated ethanol subsidies–but that is another story). Also thanks to the noise and drama produced by Congress, basa acquired its own “brand recognition” and picked up a group of devoted consumers both here and abroad.
Pan-cooked Basa with Herbs
Indeed, when I buy catfish, I buy basa. American catfish, particularly in the early days of aquiculture, could sometimes taste musty and dirty, whereas I have always found basa to have a clean, delicate flavor and wonderful light flaky texture. After trying out a number of smear campaigns against basa (most of which ricocheted and cost consumer sentiment against all catfish) the Catfish Farmers of America have decided to rebrand their own product as “DELECATA™”. This is (apparently) plain old channel catfish which has been rebranded and renamed. To quote Saveur magazine,
Processed from larger fish, the custom-cut filets will be more than twice the size of regular catfish filets and sold at a higher price. ‘Let’s face it, catfish is not the best name, especially for people outside the South,’ says Jeremy Robbins, a marketer for the Catfish Institute, the industry group in charge of the makeover.
Astonishingly the Ramey Agency, a corporate consultant, worked for three years coming up with the DELECATA™ concept and was paid a substantial amount of money for doing so. Having said this, DELECATA™ looks pretty tasty and will probably actually sell in a world filled with dim consumers willing to pay for organic potatoes. I’ll happily try it if I win the lottery (or ever see it in a Brooklyn supermarket).
I guess we’ll see how DELECATA™ works out. In the mean time the catfish wars continue. Both American producers and Vietnamese producers are coming under the shadow of Chinese catfish exports. China is enormous and, as anyone trying to do business anywhere knows, Chinese producers can undersell anyone (unless the products in question require extraordinary technological finesse). The Chinese are capable of flooding the catfish market and crushing both Vietnamese and American producers. An intriguing idea being floated by the Vietnamese catfish farmers is to create a super hybrid between the more humble species of Pangasius being farmed today and the Mekong’s elusive giant catfish (which is a close relative). So it looks like giant mutant catfish lie in our near future. In the mean time enjoy a plate of tasty catfish/basa/delacata/whatever.
A Pangasius Processing Line–Feeding the planet is ugly work
The Royal Steel Crown of Romania
The Steel Crown of Romania was made from a cannon captured from the Ottoman Empire during the Romanian war for Independence. During this conflict, which lasted from 1877 to 1878, the Russian czar allied with the Romanians in order to exploit Turkish weakness. The czar gained control of Bessarabia whereas the Romanians obtained independence from the Ottomans. The Romanian Kingdom was a constitutional monarchy welded together out of two former vassal provinces, Moldavia and Wallachia. Ruled by various monarchs from the house of Hohenzollern, the kingdom lasted between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947 (when rule over Romania passed to the communist party).
The Coat of Arms of The Kingdom of Romania
The Turkish gun melted down to provide steel for the Steel Crown was seized at Plevna (Pleven) in Bulgaria after the end of a 5 month siege which cost the combined Russian/Romanian army 38,000 casualties. The actual steel molding work was completed at the Romanian army arsenal in Bucharest. Carol I, the first king of the new Romanian state chose to use steel in order to commemorate the bravery of the Romanian soldiers (and because he needed gold for other things).
King Carol I of Romania
The steel crown is a striking historical object which signifies rulership of Romania. Today it is a curiosity kept at the National History Museum at the former Postal Services Palace in Bucharest. For all of its historical importance, the crown is made of steel and has the practical and material value of a paperweight.
Bust of Sir William Herschel
Happy Birthday to Sir Frederick William Herschel. who was born on November 15th 1738! Ferrebeekeeper has touched on Herschel’s scientific and musical accomplishments and we have also explored his convictions concerning extraterrestrial life, but have what have we done lately to commemorate the long deceased astronomer and his contributions to human knowledge?
- …other than photoshop this cake (sorry Seth)….
That’s why we’re observing the great man’s birthday by listing a few of Herschel’s additional accomplishments (which didn’t fit in the prior, overlong post) and by making some brief comments concerning multi-disciplinary polymaths–who are rapidly disappearing in a world of myopic specialists. Perhaps this will in some way suffice to memorialize this personal hero.
Although Sir William is principally known as an astronomer, he regarded himself as a well-rounded man of science and studied many other disciplines both in and out of the sciences. Indeed one of his more remarkable discoveries–that non-visible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation exist–is really a physics discovery rather than an astronomy discovery (although the disciplines are allied). However Sir William also worked in the natural sciences, and is credited with an important biological discovery. Prior to his time, coral was regarded as a plant. Sir William got out his microscope and made some direct observations of coral cells. He concluded that since coral cells had the same thin membranes as animal cells, the organism was an animal. Such is of course the case and today’s aquarium docents patiently explain to first-graders that corals and siphonophorae are actually creatures (although they, cnidarians, lack central nervous systems and can’t even enjoy basic sensations, much less book-of-the-month). Sir William was an ideal renaissance man whose intellect and creativity allowed him insights into many different fields–which segues us to contemplating the scientific community of the present.
A microscope photograph of mushroom coral (by James Nicholson)
Contrary to what we might expect, today Sir William would probably find no place in the professional sciences (astronomy, physics, biology, or otherwise). For in the sciences, as in other realms of academia, the gownless are vehemently cast out. Someone who spent so much time practicing oboe and composing symphonies would never be able to get through the mountain of information necessary for an unfortunately named BS degree (to say nothing about attaining the doctorate so necessary to research and publish).
Of course it’s admirable that we train our scientists at such immense length in specialized accredited schools. And it’s also necessary! Any freshman scientist has his head swimming with a gigantic amount of information because science itself has grown. Each branch of science is broader and wider and deeper (and other dimensions that non-scientists have no names for) every year. Only people who have tremendous self-discipline and an advanced knowledge of where they want to go in life (no to mention substantial smarts) can travel such a path, and even these paragons can only choose one path each.
Men like Herschel traveled the frontiers of science the way that men like Jim Bowie traveled the frontiers. They are legends who opened up new realms–but we might not have any place for either one today (or more likely they would both be anonymous consultants battling the Washington beltway to their midlevel office jobs).
"What the hell kind of simile was that?"
I mention all of this because I love and revere science but, despite trying to keep up, I am increasingly baffled. Scientists express their dismay at the laughable opinions of the layperson, but science stands in danger of becoming a mystery cult assessable only to the ridiculously highly educated. I don’t have any solutions or suggestions about this. Unlike some fields of endeavor I could name, science is not complicated because of politics or insidious Wall Street insiders. It’s complicated because it’s complicated. Only continuous studying and striving can allow scientists to push back the boundaries of human understanding (even as the rest of us connive to sell insurance and plastic junk to each other). That seemingly precludes brilliant crossovers. Strange visionary outsiders like Herschel no longer contribute their insights and talents, which is a great pity.
Pictured: Science
I’m sorry I strayed into personal opinion there. Perhaps some actual scientists can set me straight concerning interdisciplinary methodology within their fields. In the mean time have some birthday cake and join me in waiting for the next polymath to give us a brilliant discovery which opens up the universe to the rest of us.
Herschel's Reflecting Telescope at Slough
ferrebeekeeper 
