5th
Tales of Brilliant Scientists
I am currently reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. The part that interests me is not the theory on evolution but the details on how we are constructed from basic building blocks — how atoms form molecules/amino acids/nucleotides/DNA which are subsumed by cells which in turn construct many-celled bodies … and eventually, if you go up this chain far enough, you find us.
Part of what makes this engaging is simply the process of demystifying a very fogged-up part of my brain. I didn’t do so well in biology/chemistry in high school — I didn’t have the tools to put structure behind the unending stream of nonsensical vocabulary. I was confused about how atoms created molecules, how amino acids and nucleotides were related, how cells reproduced and created larger structures such as livers or hearts, how chemical messages (hormones/neurotransmitters) were constructed and sent, etc., etc., etc.
(As an aside, I am ashamed to admit that I never had the wherewithal to ask partially because I couldn’t foresee a practical use but moreso because I was too busy doing my next period’s homework.)
The older I get, it seems, the less patience I have for gaps in my understanding of the world. Paradoxically, this feeling only increases as I learn more. I think this has something to do with how knowledge is construed. Imagine that the sum total of everything we could know as a mass on a map. No matter how quickly we explore, the horizon always expands faster. [1]
Picking up molecular biology means unlocking the doors to a dozen other subjects: biochemistry, biophysics, neurology, cognitive science, bioinformatics, genetics. Each of these unlock the doors to a dozen more. Even if you manage to reach the coast, it is always possible to explore the ocean (that is, do a PhD or original research).
So the more you know, the more you don’t know. It’s a maddening chase that is hopelessly lost even at the beginning. In high school, I was confident about my knowledge of the world. In retrospect, this confidence stemmed not from brilliance but its opposite: because I knew so little, I consequently had a much smaller pool of unknowns. Since then, my pool of unknowns has grown monstrously, while its counterpart has remained relatively inconsequential and lonely.
If ignorance is bliss, why bother at all? If all the light of knowledge does is make you curse the expanding darkness, why string up lanterns and roads at all? The answer, for me, has less to do with some noble belief in humanity and more to do with my own compulsions. The same gene that makes brilliant scientists makes lousy people. So it goes.
[1] To be precise, a better data structure / model would be a directed acyclic graph. Any given node might have multiple prerequisites. Bioinformatics might require some degree of knowledge in genetics, molecular biology, and computer science. Of course, this is still coarse: to make the model more accurate, one would have to break each subject into more atomic bits of knowledge.
