What That Renoir Painting Taught Me About Molecular Biology

Science and Art Share More Common Ground Than We Realize

I shifted my stance, rolling to the outside edges of my feet. Everything below my hips ached but I barely even noticed until I tried to move. When I was halted here in front of Renoir’s “Le Bald it aussi Le Souper au bal”, there was no attention to spare for anything except the image. All I could see were tone, shape, movement and frame.

The image was enrapturing. Standing here, I had no thought or choice but was simply caught up in it. I could hear the pulsing, raucous music and I could feel the warmth of the dancers’ bodies as they twirled and spun, as they hopped and skipped around the dance floor.

I inched a half-pace closer to the canvas.

And there it is — the heel of my shoe rubbed against my blister, sending a sharp jolt up my leg, and then the pain vanished as soon as I planted my foot back down. From this view, just a few inches closer, I could see that the faces are just swirls. No defined eyes, no noses, no mouths. Just dabs of color and texture, completely unrecognizable and indistinguishable from this distance. But in their context, against their backdrop, I knew in flashing instant that these were faces. They were just shapeless swirls, but their meaning was completely unmistakable. Their bodies, the chandelier, the floor, every object in the image was imprecisely shaped. Instead everything was just a sweeping swirl of blended color and texture. Somehow, Renoir knew the exact proportions of color, texture and orientation to evoke the image of a raucous, frolicking dance, while including no unnecessary detail. Accuracy was unnecessary — in fact superfluous — as the image portrayed a very specific reality without it.

As a molecular biologist, I’ve been trained to value certain aspects of my work very highly. Chief among these is accuracy. Objectivity, rationality and accuracy are the only possible means of representing reality truthfully. The duty of the scientist is to be an unaffected observer, separate and uninvolved with the object of their study. So we strive to remove all bias from our scientific reporting. We insert no personal opinions. We present only the facts. We employ no overarching agenda, but remain true to the data alone. And the importance of scientific accuracy is abundantly obvious. Accuracy is important because science, quite often, produces commodities. Medications, household products, engines and surgical tools are important to our community and accurate, unbiased reporting of data is necessary for their development. The most immediate tangible impact of science, which is its power to create a useful product, is directly dependent on our adherence to accuracy.

But commodities are only one product of scientific investigation. Science is also, in its fundamental essence, self-exploration. Science investigates the tangible, the rational, the mechanistic, and the fundamental aspects of the reality we are inextricably, definitively part of. When we realize that we are, quite literally, made of the same stuff the natural world is made of, that we ourselves are natural creatures, natural science becomes a search for meaning. When we study genetics, for instance, we are not just making products to overcome the impact of disease, but we are searching for an understanding of our own nature. Knowing our own composition gives us an identity within our reality.

Suddenly, data and facts become sickeningly boring, and we find ourselves desperately flailing to know the narrative — the meaning — behind them. We realize that we are not unaffected observers.

In fact, we cannot be unaffected observers.

We ourselves are part of the observed. At first, we assumed that our purpose was to harness, master and channel an inanimate reality. While we were busy optimizing output and decreasing production costs, we were overlooking our role as participators. All this time, we’ve been part of this unknown, mysterious reality of existing.

When we sit back from calculating, measuring, comparing and observing we begin to contextualize our data. Only here, once we exchange rigor for integrative thought can we see the themes that connect natural reality. These themes echo throughout our spiritual and psychological experience and are demonstrated for us in a tangible way in our natural surroundings.

What are these themes? We see the theme of reciprocity in ecosystems, each species giving something for the good of the whole, and in turn, consuming some product of another species. A plant doesn’t calculate the cost of releasing carbon dioxide to its surroundings. It doesn’t wonder if it can afford to release its precious seeds; it simply gives freely, and in turn takes nutrients and hydration from the soil so the cycle may continue. Nature paints an image for us of safety in community, evoking our own longing for connection and reciprocity.

We see the theme of transformation in natural processes; nothing remains static for long, but organisms, cells and proteins undergo transitions from one mode to another; from one state of being to another. Complete darkness transforms into brilliant light at dawn; birth transforms into death and dormancy transforms into vibrancy.

Rigorous adherence to accurate data collection and analysis will always be a fundamental aspect of scientific knowledge, but data alone doesn’t tell us a story. There is a narrative that will be applied, that must be applied, that encompasses the data but reaches far beyond the “objective” reality. In this light, accuracy is not the sole metric of scientific progress. The meaning of scientific data is not found in a low p-value, it’s found when I step back and see myself within the landscape of nature.

In my lab, it’s easy to mistake myself for a god-like manipulator. I take inanimate molecules and probe them, alter them, modify them, count them, observe them, characterize them, and manipulate them. And as a commoditizer, I harness them and market them.

But they were never mine to sell, and the hierarchy I’ve constructed (with myself conveniently at the top) is artificial.

The fabric composed of all of it — the human, the cell, the insect, the molecule, the star — is what I want to know. We all, at every level of magnification, have more in common than we do separating us. We are all members of the same tangled web of interwoven being.

We reveal this meaning, these themes, in the same way that Renoir painted reality. He saw that there an image means more than exact photographic representation. In fact, exactness can be abandoned while meaning is still portrayed. So just as he abandoned sharp lines and defined outlines of hands and feet, I will set aside the data, percentages, charts and error bars and instead we’ll talk about what all of it means. Just as Renoir painted motion, music and levity, I’ll write about the interdependence of genomic elements. I’ll write about cooperation in an organism. I’ll write about how genetics reveals the fallacy of binary opposition.

Renoir seems to have found that perfect lines and accurate images are the least interesting kind. Just the same, all of my time calculating, measuring, weighing and comparing has revealed that Literal truth is truly the least interesting aspect of truth. The figurative meaning of reality holds such greater weight for us, because it is this that bears implications for our human experience.