my dream: grow up to be an enchantress
curiosity and the magical powers of scientific writing to explain, elucidate and enchant
I majored in Molecular Biology. I founded an art gallery and an events business. Sometimes you’ll catch me onstage (or onSTAGE). My career began in finance and investing. People frequently question why I studied what I did —
And I studied Molecular Biology because I am fascinated by life, and the creativity of scientific experimentation, and the immeasurable magic of our biology and the thrill of capturing discrete concepts with exact words. That’s a partial answer…
This article “Explainer, Elucidator, Enchanter: A Gradation of Great Writing” by Maria Papova on Brainpickings provided me with the missing link in my ‘answers’, one whose absence I had recognised yet previously only been able to describe with ellipses and question marks.
I could relate with the first paragraph: “…I found myself struggling to convey the hierarchy of good writing, particularly of good science writing — a hierarchy experienced so concretely in the act of reading but inexpressible as soon as one tries to dismantle the magic of enthralling prose. The difference between good writing and great writing is always palpable and rarely articulable, but the stakes are even higher in science writing, where the standards of truth and beauty are such that the precise and the poetic must converge in order to yield both comprehension and enchantment.”
Papov goes on to visually diagram her hierarchy of explainers, elucidators (explain + illuminate), and the holy grail of enchanters (writers who explain + illuminate x touch readers with ‘magic’, singular wisdom and wonder).
Papov recalls Schopenhauer’s distinction between talent and genius,“ that talent hits a target no one else can hit, whereas genius hits a target no one else can see,” and writes: “The greatest enchanters are creators of distinctive aesthetics — of writing, of storytelling, of thought itself.”
And it is indeed a lofty dream, to grow up to be an enchantress, but don’t the best dreams belong way high up in the cumulous clouds? I have been told I have a way with words, at the very least I know I am on the way of words, and from this vantage point looking back at my university self, I chose to major in Molecular Biology to study the magical powers of curiosity, experimentation, and functional, accurate, beautiful scientific writing to tell stories, to share wonder.
My senior thesis for Princeton University was not enchanting. In fact, it was too heavy with the burden of explaining to illuminate, too dense to radiate its identity. But it was a start. We all began somewhere. And Papov’s visual diagram is also a map: whatever the path, we start in the outermost ring. Impossible is it to pop up casting spells with a Nobel vocabulary without first learning the words.
As Coldplay sang, “so let’s go back to the start”: Plavix: Platelets, Patents and the Pay-For-Delay Paradigm. Follow the link for all 167 pages (!)
