The Natural Search for Meaning
Where Science and Scientist Blur
While my very first career aspiration was for the lofty position of grocery bagger, this dream rapidly gave way to my dream of becoming a scientist. As soon as I started to hear my family talk about “scientists,” and how they are people who learn about the earth, the universe, animals, cells and genes, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. I remember realizing for the first time that there are people whose job is to study what exists. The material things that can be measured, touched, quantified, described and observed. Every other pursuit suddenly seemed so artificial, so made-up. What could be more real or more relevant than studying what is literally real? From that point on, I answered the evergreen “what do you want to do when you grow up” questions the exact same way. The natural sciences had a strong magnetism, drawing me in undeniably, and declaring my career path seemed like less of a choice on my part than an awareness of my inevitable destination. The pull of the natural sciences has stood the test of time through my adolescence, and has led me through the completion of a PhD in molecular biology.
When I so readily answer the what career question, it’s promptly followed by the why question. I’ve had varied answers over the past two decades. As a nerdy kid accustomed to having my ego fluffed by a loving, encouraging family, I was eager to tell every curious stranger that “I’m good at it.” It didn’t take long to realize that no one likes a self-congratulator, so my answer started to shift to “I just like science.” It was true, but was not very informative. I gradually shifted my answer to impress my youth pastor: “I want to help people through medical research.” It was enough to garner a wide-eyed “wow” from my church friends and a few “you are really using God’s gift” comments from their parents. When I met my boyfriend’s parents I tailored my answer to paint a very industrious picture of myself: “there are plenty of job opportunities.”
These answers had a common, quite meaningless purpose, and they served it quite well: impressing and appeasing other people. But then I found myself in my third year of researching my PhD dissertation, with no publishable data, no end in sight, seemingly moving backward, away from my goal instead of toward it. I dreaded family functions and the constant “when will you graduate?!” questions, I dreaded my friends’ facebook updates about their jobs, babies and houses, and my ambition, drive and ego were giving way to disappointment.
The array of answers that previously were ready at the tip of my tongue seemed superficial now. There had to be a deeper reason for pursuing science, a reason that could withstand the devastation of repeatedly failed experiments, the frustration that overwhelmed me when I seemed to be terrible at it. This deeper reason for being a scientist doesn’t invoke my personal preferences or the usefulness of the sciences, but instead alludes to the very essence of the natural sciences. The reason is this: I am a part of the natural world. The cells in my body are made out of atoms of the same elements that dirt is made of, which are the same elements that stars are made of, which are the same elements that puppies are made of. All the diversity I see in my world, from the animate to the inanimate, from the long-lasting to the very temporary, are just different arrangements of the same basic stuff. The more I look through a microscope, the more the lines of delineation begin to blur between animate and inanimate, living and non-living, human and other. There is a unity among all that exists, a unity that is plain to see in the reality of our physical existence.
A further attribute of science that pulls me in to the study is the purity of the natural world. Many of the behaviors of humans are heavily influenced by customs and traditions that are traceable throughout time and space. We are motivated by man-made forces that are outside of our control; political and economic forces that are dictated without our choice. We heavily influenced by history, applying customs and traditions such as marriage and occupying single-family homes that may seem universally accepted but are actually unique to our culture. The microscopic worlds of cells, genes and proteins are not subject to these forces. We see microcosms under our microscopes that are a little more free than we are. A little less anxious and eager than we are. This purity gives us a more basic, fundamental image of reality, removing the artificial pressures that seem so crushing at our human level. .
My work as a molecular biologist has taught me that the lines that I always thought separated me from the natural world are artificial, and instead that there is a basic wholeness of all things. This understanding gives a whole new meaning to science, because if we can understand nature better, we will understand ourselves better. Science shows us our place in the world. We see that cells are tiny communities, not unlike our communities, with nuanced, complicated relationships between genes and proteins. We see that what have initially been called “molecular switches” actually reveal themselves to be much more complex than binary systems. These systems reflect back at us our own reasoning processes. We see that while we once called cells “factories” or “machines,” the intricate webs of ligand-receptor interactions and cascades of protein expression events actually quite closely reflect our own complex reasoning processes. When we approach nature with simultaneous openness and expectation, holding in the same hand our search for meaning and our commitment to experimental data, we find a rich tapestry into which our very selves are inextricably woven.
This sameness between the scientist and the science is the premise of the following explorations. With each new installment, we will investigate an example of nature as a context for humanity. In this expression of modern natural philosophy, we will couple scientific data with the search for meaning that is lurking at the very foundation of the human experience.
This piece, and all in the series may also be found on Genes Tell Stories, Elizabeth’s personal blog.
