Evolit: Week 1--Getting started

I think I had an incredible moment of thinking out loud when I made a particularly ignorant and unfounded comment in class today about private education fostering more independent thinking. First of all, having attended private learning institutions for most of my life, I not only have a one-sided view of my claim but I know from first-hand experience that independent thinking is a value in theory but not in practice. I recall being taught to be a critical or skeptical thinker, but is this is not the same as independent. Second, my claim that my ability to think more independently at Bryn Mawr is due to the fact that I'm paying for it is also untrue, as I'm mostly here with the help of financial aid.

I don't think there are any institutions that foster or teach independent thinking; I think that other individuals (i.e. other independent thinkers) teach it. I'm not entirely sure it's something that can be taught; I think all humans are born as independent thinkers and that ability is either nurtured or suppressed, either taking root by adolescence or becoming extremely buried, like the human capacity for language.

I don't think more independent thinkers exist in any particular place, but I do think that they tend to find each other. As Ann Carson might say, they recognize each other "like italics." Do I consider myself an independent thinker? I guess so. Sometimes. I certainly gravitated towards a few independent thinkers as friends and definitely "prefer that story" of myself. In trying to recall people who nurtured my independent thinker, I'm able to list quite few, though I think they would call it "creativity" instead of "independent thinking."

All this has brought me to wonder what exactly independent thinking is. It's definitely not the same as critical thinking. Is it simply thinking for yourself? (Though "simply" isn't really a word I should be throwing around here). Is it being conscious of the decisions we do and don't make for ourselves?

So I did some google searching...

http://www.rit.org/

http://www.ndt-ed.org/TeachingResources/ClassroomTips/Independent_Thinking.htm

 

The idea of science as a story telling at first seemed a little unsettling and indirect conflict with what we have always been told about science.  Science is the truth, science isproven, and it couldn’t possibly just be a story.  But as we discussed more in-depth the idea of science as awork in progress it started to make more sense.  Science is always evolving, I remember from my sophomoreyear when I took biology to my senior year when I took a.p. biology we weretaught about new discoveries that weren’t known just two years before.  Something that is undisputed truthcan’t change and new discoveries can’t be made.  This is why it makes sense to view science as a story that is constantly evolving.   

I've been thinking extensively about the question posed on Thursday- the general issue of what really is the difference, in the end, between science and literary criticism, because although I see them as, as Darwin would maybe put it, homologuous structures, I think they really do engage with different parts of a person's intellect and emotional being. I think the answer lies in the exact role that subjectivity plays in the two different processes, something that with the understanding of the crack we over simplified. I think it's crucial that, in science, that while the process from which we draw conclusions is based on personal preferences and experiences, it is not something that should ideally remain in the end product. Supporting your argument in a literary paper is distinctly different from in a scientific realm because you can still have an excellent conclusion and argument even if the opposite thesis is valid. In fact, I've been told that, in order for an argument to be interesting and worth your time, in most cases one must be able to make a case for the opposite. I'm still working out exactly what this difference means, but either way I don't think it should be overlooked.

I don't understand why the story of science is to be preferred over other stories, such as overt fiction. I understand that we live in a science-driven society, where even religion must now try to prove its factuality through appeals to history and logic and even quantum mechanics. For this reason, Professor Grobstein's lecture struck many of us as completely revolutionary/ thoroughly countercultural. But based on his observations, which I have taken to be accurate through the process of my philosophical training, a few questions arise for me.

If a narrative such as Darwin's evolutionary one is indeed somewhat close to being "true" which is to say it nearly matches the state of affairs in nature (a representationalist definition), what does this fact accomplish for our species? Can Darwin's story inspire lives of dedication, service, and altruism such as those inspired by the various religious narratives worldwide? Or are Darwin's and other scientific narratives tricking themselves into believing they have found 'truth,' which is to say a less-than inspiring story about human life and natural affairs that tends to promote smug, self-satisfied beings who think they have conquered mystery and can engineer their own destiny and the destiny of life writ large at the helm of the world? My objections stem from Nietzsche's idea of "the last men" who find themselves living in such a society, where they believe they found truth and mystery is dead. Such complacent people think there is nothing left to be done and live mundane, pleasurable but empty lives that Nietzsche derides and uses as a metaphor for the trajectory of our own society. In Nietzsche's view, we need to leave the goddess of wisdom (i.e. mystery, the unknown, truth) cloaked rather than try to uncover her knowledge for ourselves. We should appreciate and honor art, guise, appearance, as ends in themselves, rather than seek the "essence" behind/ beyond material life. "It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are justified."

This is not to say that science cannot promote positive goods in the world as well. However, I think it would be beneficial to take into account the fact that science is a human creation like any other and to appreciate it in that context, rather than burrow our noses blindly in pursuit of truth and think that we can uncover something literally true about the nature of reality, objectively. As I said in the first class, we are by default subjective beings in the way we are embodied, so anything we perceive will not only be through our subjective "crack" of culture, worldview, etc, but also through the human lens and resulting organs, senses, cognitive processes and so forth. We physically cannot perceive some things that are "objectively" there, for example high pitched frequencies that only dogs and other animals can detect. Who is to say that our human senses are capable of discerning everything that is? Moreover, constructing experiments as if there is an object that can be known is biased from the outset. Heisenberg showed that the very presence of the observer affects the outcome of an experiment, so the very framing of the experiment in the above sentence creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That's enough ranting for now. I'd also like to add on the point of science-philes vs. science-phobes that I used to tell people I wanted to be a physics major, only I wasn't smart enough so I had to settle for philosophy. I now realize that physics along with the other sciences only have their own interpretations of the world as well; it doesn't mean that scientists have some special mystical knowledge that the rest of us aren't privy to. In fact, I think it's kind of cute how scientists think they know things for sure. Taking science classes after my philosophical training has shown me that scientists take many more things on faith than they would like to admit.

As a final thought, if we are a science-driven society with a belief in science, why aren't we listening to the scientists?

"Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course . . . No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished."

-1600 Senior Scientists from 71 countries, including half of all Nobel Prize winners, November 18, 1992; "World Scientists Warning to Humanity"

I had two distinct thoughts I wanted to share on this past week's discussion. The comparison of Obama to Lincoln was an interesting one, made, at least in my opinion, more for the media to add a twist to their stories than off any real similarities. Coincidences abound, certainly, but origins in Illinois can hardly be used as a basis for such a comparison. Both are great men in their own right and to say Obama is a continuation of Lincoln takes from him his own personal accomplishments that make him the leader he is. Certainly it's possible, even likely, he took cues from Lincoln, but being influenced by someone is by no means the same as being the continuation of someone.

In relation to evolution and stories, this brings to mind whether stories of Lincoln have been cleaned up, selectively remembered, etc., as was mentioned in class, and if so, whether people would feel the same way had they the full story. In a sense, this public memory of Lincoln is the evolution of his story.

Secondly, I wanted to mention, as several others have before me, the poem O Captain! My Captain! and the personal vs. "taught" readings. While I, too, had heard the underlying story of Lincoln, I read this poem differently every time I pick it up. I think that as an individual acquires more experiences, their perceptions change, or evolve, one might say. The intent of a poem is separate from the reader's response to it, something high school teachers seems to forget on a regular basis.

This class has so far been a really new and interesting one. I came to the class without any clue as to what was expected of me or what I could contribute. I am still figuring that part but the lectures and the discussions have got me thinking about science and literature now.

I have been thinking about how stories and science go together and I cannot come to think of any place where there isn't a story. Science isn't as factual or rigid as it seems. In my opinion even a lab report is telling a story. A story about the person who thought of working in the lab with certain things. Those certain elements that form the "experiment". The failures, the tension, the struggles and the successes of the person(s) are involved in making that lab report and that is a story. That lab report is only edited enough to remove the personality from it and thus hiding the story to the rest of the world but that does not mean that there isn't a story there.

Now coming to the reading of the poem "O Captain, My Captain!" which I found really fun because it reminded me of third grade where we were made to read poems together so that we learned to get into sync with others and increase our coordination. But I would have never guessed that the poem was about Lincoln, it seemed more about some young, passionate and daring explorer's death. Being told that it was about Lincoln just made us re-read the poem and search for clues or hints that would link to Lincoln. But it was all a matter of being told, because if someone would have told me that it was about " Alexander the Great", I would have searched for clues to prove that!

As for puns, I am not sure this is like a good one or that it even is a pun but  here it is. I am indian and in the morining i was walking with two of my other indian friends and we were all wearing red jackets. So someone called out and was like,"You all look so red today." and so my friend replied by saying, "Yeah, we are red Indians". This is my contribution to the puns.

 

I have never had literature and science compared side by side in quite such a way before. I realized about halfway through the discussion that I had always seperated them as completely different ideas, but I really had no basis for this seperation except that I had been told that they were different concepts by my teachers. Upon evaluation of the class discussion, I can no longer beleive that it is a absolute truth. Since both subjects contain a great degree of subjectivity, due to "the crack" which I think exsists in both subjects and probably subjects to a certain degree, there really isn't a great deal of difference in the way that they operate. Students of literature look for the new and revolutionary to the same end as students of science. They both want to create a new idea to build upon.

I was also struck by how interpretations were vastly different. The discussion involving Lincoln and Obama as well as the "O Captain! My Captain!" poem really did exhibit some difference of experience. I for one had never read the poem before and would not have thought of Lincoln as being the subject of the poem if it hadn't been brought up. I had realized a certain degree of parallelism between Lincoln and Obama but I have to agree with the comments in class about it being hard to make so many connections and assumptions since they were inagurated under different circumstances and the time period that they revolve around are vastly different. It is hard to draw anything conclusive on so thin a basis.

I have really enjoyed the discussion this week and look forward to having new ideas to contemplate for the upcoming semester.

I have never thought about Science and its comparison to Literature in the way that we have discussed this past week.  Over the several Biology courses that I’ve taken, my professors have pushed us to see past the writing on the page and analyze the “truth” behind what the author has said, find what evidence is used to support the idea, and deduce if that evidence fully supports what was stated. After Professor Grobstein’s lecture, while seeing Science as inductive and continually morphing mirrored how I was taught to approach a scientific theory.  However, when reading a research paper for another science class, I had always had a basis of knowledge from which I could pull to analyze the author’s conclusions.  In that science class, amongst the students and the professor, we all shared a common understanding of the basic facts: what a gene is, carbon can form 4 bonds, etc. These statements are basic, solid facts. Because of these facts, saying “nothing is true” seems far-fetched to me.  Is a list of facts still a story? Does a story always need to have an opposite that could potentially be true? (As it probably shows, I’m still a bit confused with all this.)

 

“Does being taught how to read a poem invalidate your personal connection to it?”  This was one of the questions Professor Dalke posed in Thursday’s lecture.  This question was posed after we had collectively read the poem.  When we all were reciting it, I found myself listening to my neighbors more than paying attention to what was on the page in front of me.  I was more focused on the synchrony of our voices than that of our words.  There was no one out of synch and no one who chose to read the poem in a different tone.  We were all taught the same rhythmic pace for this one poem.  This distracting synchronism in some sense lessened my connection to the poem, but I wouldn’t say it invalidated it. However, at the same time, being taught in “6^th grade” the significance of Whitman did make me want to emphasize certain portions I knew were important.  Being taught the importance of Whitman helped me develop a personal connection to the poem. 

 

 

In our second class, Professor Dalke made a point about whether telling someone what a poem is about will close off their ability to interpret the poem in their own way (at least I think she was arguing in the affirmative for this).  At first I agreed with this statement.  As someone who had never read the Captain poem before, I was trying to figure out what the poem meant when someone in the class told us all it was about Lincoln.  When the student said that, I gave up on trying to work through my own analysis and just accepted the Lincoln story. The simple explanation that the poem was about Lincoln did close my mind off to finding meaning in the poem in my own way.

But as we began to further discuss what it happens when someone tells you what a poem means, I thought back to an English teacher I had in my junior year of high school.  In that class we read "Song of Myself" (also by Walt Whitman...I see now that there is a lot of Whitman in my life), and our paper assignment for that unit was to take one of the stanzas and write a thesis paper analyzing  it to find it's meaning.  Well, I was completely stumped.  At that point in my life, I had no patience for finding meaning from poetr.  I preferred narratives and long sentences to "abstract"combinations of words, which is what I felt poetry was.  I went in to see him for help, because I had gotten almost nowhere on my own.  He presented me with what he thought the stanza was about.  I could have written my paper trying to write towards his conclusion, but he then did something which still stands in my mind as one of the best examples of teaching I have ever encountered - he took me through the stanza, pointing out what made him believe that his conclusion about what was being said was the valid conclusion.  This was the first time I was taught how to actually find meaning in a poem, and it made reading the poem more exciting and rewarding because I was able to see how Whitman was able to get a point across in his poetry.  After going through the stanza with my teacher, I realized that I did not agree with his interpretation of the meaning.  I was then able to write a paper that went in a different direction in an intelligent way (by proving my point through my own personal analysis of the poem, modeled after what he showed me).

After remembering about this English teacher and my experiences with poetry in his class, I was hesitant to agree with the idea that hearing someone else's interpretation closes off other interpretations.  It often helps me to use someone else's interpretation as a starting point to my own ideas about a poem. After all, I'm still not very patient with poetry, and it's difficult for me to come up with meaning to a poem all on my own.  But it is also true that explaining the meaning of a poem can close off someone's mind, as I became closed off to the Captain poem after hearing it was written about Lincoln.  I think the difference between the two scenarios is twofold: first, my English teacher showed me where his interpretation came from whereas in class I was simply told, and secondly I think I was more interested in  "Song of Myself"than the Captain poem.  I think this can apply to science as well.  The way to get people interested in your findings or interpretations of a certain issue is to present in a way that not only clearly lays out your own logic, but leaves the whole conclusion up for revision later on.  Without explaining, one could come across as condescending, and a lot of people close off and become defensive and unreceptive when they are confronted with that tone (well maybe I am being to general here; I myself close off when someone explains things to me in a condescending way and I am assuming that other people respond the same way).

As a science student, listening to the first lecture on the nature of science as “story telling and story revision”, I was taken aback by this initial description of science.  I believe that as students of science, we often fail to realize what science truly is, or perhaps, the way in which science is presented to us during these four years prevents us from ultimately reaching this conclusion on our own.   When we are asked to perform experiments in lab, or when we use the “Socratic method” in our science classes, we are ultimately being asked to question in order to reach an ultimate conclusion-a conclusion that we are expected to accept as truth and that will provide the basis for further study.   For us as students, within a classroom setting, science is always a method for us to reach an ultimate truth-one that has been proven and we are expected to accept.  What we fail to realize; however, is that science is not truth, but in fact a “work in progress.” as stated by Professor Grobstein.  I believe that as scientists, we always have this underlying feeling that we are working towards something, that science never ends because there is no ultimate truth-otherwise, there would be no science, but it is difficult to realize that as students because we are constantly working towards uncovering a truth within the classroom.

Going into the next class with this new view of science, I found it difficult to accept it when it was stated numerous times that a difference between science and literature included science’s attempt to “prove”.   I find that science does not attempt to “prove” anything because there does not exist an ultimate truth to prove.   The idea of proving something, to me, involves already knowing the truth, and working backwards to understand why it is so.  I believe that science, however, works towards something that does not yet exist.  As we move forward in science, we cannot say that what we previously knew was wrong and what we know now is right, but rather what we know now is less wrong than what we previously knew to be right.  For example, the idea that the Earth was the center of the universe was an idea that was thought to be very right, and any ideas that were presented against it were considered very wrong at the time.  Therefore, I believe we can make no conclusive argument that we have proven anything in science, but rather, that we have reached ideas that we believe to be less wrong than previous ideas.  So the argument that science proves, while literature is more subjective does not seem entirely accurate to me.  One argument that was presented in class; however, that I did find very convincing was the argument that ideas in science need to be replicated in order to be accepted; whereas in literature they do not.  I do agree that this is a difference that needs to be accounted for in the “versus” between science and literature.  However, there is an inherent similarlity between science and literature that is also presented with this argument.   If we analogize the scientist to the literary critic in order to make this comparison, it is evident that the literary critic, like the scientist needs to, in particular situations, analyze the text in the way in which the writer intended for the text to be analyzed.   Furthermore, ideas in literature, like in science, can be analyzed in n numerous ways –in the way the writer intended, the way in which others have analyzed the text, or in the way in which the reader wants to analyze the text.  For example, when analyzing “O Captain! My Captain!” some analyzed the poem in the way it was intended by the writer, while others presented their own interpretation.  Similarly in science, there are numerous ways in which observations can be analyzed; however, I believe it is this aspect of truth that prevents scientists from presenting ideas as do literary critics.  Science is expected to be working towards some type of truth.  It is this idea of truth within science that provides some sense of security for people.  I believe this is why in science, the idea of replicating ideas is so important.  Otherwise, scientists are literary critics-they analyze observations. 

Lastly, I walked out of class on Thursday with a question which involved our reading of “On the Origin of Species”.  We were told to read the book as a novel.  I seem to be  having trouble with that because I am not sure what reading a scientific text as a novel really means, as it is hard to get passed all the scientific jargon and look at it as simply a work of literature. 

 

I’ve always seen common people act as scientists in their everyday lives by performing small experiments: babies crying to see if someone responds or someone dressing a certain way to see if they attract attention. People conduct experiments after making some observations and see how that follows through, everyone has done it, so that part came as no surprise to me. However, I’ve never seen science has “loopy” and subjective until listening to Paul. It’s understandable that science is loopy and certain hypothesis and summaries are modified when given new information and it’s fascinating to know that there is no final answer or end to loopy science, there’s always new observations to turn to. Yet I’m still a little bothered by this, and you can blame it on my traditional thought on science. Because science deals with real world applications from stopping global warming to creating new technology to saving lives via medical procedures, I’m a little uncomfortable that there is no correct answer, objectiveness, or truth in this field. It’s an idea that I will have to get used to but it explains why sometimes science may not always work, and such an explanation is crucial to understanding the art of science.

 

As for the talk about poems…. I had forgotten that O Captain was written for Lincoln. While reading it, the last scene of “The Dead Poets Society” was replaying in my head where all the students in Robin Williams’ class stand on their desks and address him as their captain. The poem can be interpreted in many ways from a sailor addressing his captain to a citizen addressing his president to a student addressing his teacher. That’s what makes this poem great to me: The fact that it can be interpreted in numerous and various ways by numerous and various people. To me poetry doesn’t have a “right answer”, so just because the poem was written for Lincoln doesn’t mean that the reader can’t make his or her own interpretations out of it.

 

 

Over the weeks, I forgot how Obama has been compared to Lincoln in the past. Even I once used this comparison when the democratic nomination was up in the air for Clinton and Obama; I had gotten the idea from the recent issue of TIME magazine at the time. Both were inexperienced senators from Illinois who were going to step into their office with huge challenges. However the challenges are different. Lincoln had to tackle on the task of uniting a divided country and leading it through a bloody civil war. Obama’s tasks involve reviving the economy, reforming healthcare, dealing with the conflict in the middle east and in other areas of the world, and more. Because of the economy and other hardships in the country, I’ve said his presidency may be like FDR’s. Roosevelt came into office during the Great Depression and fixed the country in many ways. Even TIME magazine agreed with me on this when one of their front covers showed Obama dressed up as FDR (the idea was interesting, the picture a little weird). However when I really think about it, I don’t think Obama’s presidency can be compared to any other presidency in the past. His win itself poignant and historical itself, and his challenges involve big changes in our backyard and beyond that. To me, it seems more than what any other president has had to have done before and other sources have cited similar opinions. But in a way, I believe he’s a continuation of Lincoln in the sense that as a president, he wants the best for the country and he will do whatever he can to make sure that happens.

This week we defined the story of science as an inductive process. Science is a "loopy" unending process of revisionism, in which successful empirical scientists question observations. A good scientist summarizes their observations and recognizes that inconsistent observations are the most important ones. Because cultural and personal background influences observation there are critics of the story of science. Zadie Smith claimed, "Writing is not science," while Dr. Paul Grobstein claimed "scientific statements are...provisional stories, reflecting human perspectives." This left the class to question, is independent analysis better than the guidance of formal interpretation?

I believe that formal interpretation is an important component for learning. With formal guidance the reader has context to appreciate literature. For example, most of the class understood "O Captain! My Captain" referred to the death of Abraham Lincoln. However, I had a black and white interpretation of the poem until Dr. Dalke explained that Walt Whitman's poem was an apostrophe.  Again, I read the poem for context and questioned the interchangeable use of captain/father. Only after direction from the professor was I able to appreciate the poem as it was originally intended. After the discussion of "O Captain! My Captain" I understood the course's definition of science. My observations followed a process of revisionism and the most important ones led me to question the context of Whitman's poem.

Our conversation in class this week addressed the issue of how to define what is science and what is not.  In philosophy of science, this is referred to as the demarcation problem.  A similar problem arises in discussions of aesthetics.  It is an enormous question, encompassing science and everything else simultaneously.  For the moment, I will offer my thoughts about the potential parallel between science and literature. 

Continuing with professor Grobstein’s thought that the scientist is analogous to literary critic.  Specifically, that scientific writing and literary criticism follow the same or very similar form.  They consist of explicit references to a particular object of interpretation, a piece of writing or natural phenomenon.  The author is attempting to present their story in such a way that the reader can understand the story and how it was constructed from the available evidence.  The explicit nature of the connections facilitates the reproduction of relevant observations.  The content and structure requirements of scientific writing are not specific to papers about natural or physical topics; I am talking about good analytic writing. 

On the other hand, literary writing contains implicit references to observations.  Part of the role of the reader, literary critic is to interpret these references.  To create a coherent account of the relationship between the literary object and the set of references that the critic finds significant.  The idea of the critic selecting significant references is indirectly related to the crack in Grobstein’s story of science.  They both permit cultural and personal biases as part of the process.  I think the work we did on Thursday with the poem was consistent with process or loops outlined in the model of science as a story.  When the object of interpretation is of nature as opposed to human origins, then the act of interpretation is science. 

There are other types of writing; the relationship between scientific writing and literature is not binary.  I would like to include at least another category of writing.  This form of writing would be more for the purpose of informal communication, written as opposed to verbal, conversational.  As for literary writing, I am remaining silent on that topic for the moment.  Mostly because there is an essay I want to quote and I left the book at the farm…  I am curious to see how useful my distinction between scientific and nonscientific writing proves this semester.  

Our first discussion with Professor Grobstein was probably one of the most eye opening discussions I have every heard.  After conforming to the scientific process taught to me since elementary I was a little uneasy thinking outside of the box.  After each explanation of what science "stories" were, being inconsistent and untruths I kept questioning what does not fit? For instance I know that organisms grow and get bigger. Is not not a truth that has been proven? Or is there another "story" that disproves this truth.  I guess once my world becomes turned upside down when hearing the opposite of what I have been told I get worried.  I feel that we need to comfort of knowing our so called "truths." Like I know that the sun will come up or that the skies will clear after a storm.  Or even that there are no monsters under my bed.  To hear that these are only stories that can be disproved takes away my comfort.  Maybe the benefit of reaching outside my comfort zone I will be able to figure out things for myself and asking the questions that make me uncomfortable. 

In our second discussion Professor Dalke again made me question what I have been taught.  When talking about Lincoln I always think about elementary school.  When I was young my teachers would tell me wonderful things about Lincoln, Columbus, Jefferson, etc.  All of the people that inspire others.  I placed each one on a pedestal until I learned in middle school that Lincoln never thought of abolishing slavery, Jefferson had a mistress, Columbus enslaved the Indians and all of my pedestals crumbled.  When comparing Lincoln and Obama, I don't see the similarities yet.  Obama has only been in office for a few days and still has time to leave his mark.  I feel that it's wrong to compare Lincoln and Obama just because they both are from Illinois.  Then we enter into poetry.  To me I am not very fond of poetry and do not like trying to figure out the meaning.  I like to read poetry but not analyze it.  With poetry because there is no definite meaning I feel that it lets people down.  There are some that like to have a clear understanding and meaning to things and with poetry there is never one meaning.  Poetry is then avoided in order to avoid straining ones brain and getting a headache. When reading O Captain! My Captain! I at first just believed the poem to be about a ships Captain.  After our discussion I could see the evidence of the poem being about Lincoln but I also think the poem could be about anyone.  I feel that the poem could be a tribute to anyone that was a mentor to another, whose loss would be felt by many.  Whoever has inspired or aided you in becoming who you are, this poem is for them.  I can't wait till our next class after reading some of Darwin's work.

 

This was the first time I have ever read the 'Captain' poem and it did not occur to me at all that it could be about Lincoln and as a matter of fact, it upset me when I was told it was about Lincoln. In my mind this poem was a more personal experience than a kind of connection to a former president. When the poem was being read, I was thinking about people I respect and love that have fallen. The whole poem, to me, was a metaphor and all that I had to do was apply it to myself. 

Because of this I want to say I don't like it at all when I am told what I am supposed to get out of a poem. I would much rather enjoy poetry by making a poets work my own by relating to it. I know that the poet wasn't talking about anyone I know, but does it really matter? Why does a poet write? To be read, maybe, to convey emotions, to make a point... I love reading poetry, but only if I can betray the ideas of the poet and make the poem my own. So, I was very much disappointed that the poem was not mine, but rather was Lincoln's, as evidence seems to show so. 

      I was very interested in how my own personal experiences influenced my interpretation of the 'Captain' poem that we read together in class on Thursday; I have for many summers sailed competitively in boats, so the imagery, the vocabulary, and the maritime nature of the poem brought me into my own reality. I had never read this poem before, so when someone said it was about Lincoln, I started to doubt my interpreting ability...did I selfishly root myself in my own world at the expense of the poet and his intentions? I realized, after we talked about puns, that this was not the case, and that perhaps this is what is to be expected when the Lincoln context is unknown.

With this said (and in the context of our discussion of the differences between scientific and non-scientific writing) I decided to perform an experiment: I randomly selected a paragraph from a page in Ch.2 of Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species,' I read it to myself, asked myself to interpret what I had just read. I actually struggled with this a bit because phrases such as 'greater than the average' and 'less than usual' and 'generally' led me to believe that there is, indeed, a 'wrong' way to interpret this excerpt...so I should really just believe what Darwin tells me so I don't get too lost or uninterested! Even specific vocabulary or conclusive words like 'indefinite' and 'unknown' or '...and thus' led me to believe that those who choose not to rely on the greater collective of stories to which Darwin refers (some people must have written a 'story' about the average values of something at some point) will have incorrectly interpreted the material (at the author's expense indeed). I think in this way, scientific writing is more noticeably authoritative or regimented...but I'm still pondering all of this. Lastly, to finish off my experiment, I read the text surrounding my random passage for the context. Since my interpretative process involved being directed to a definitive greater context, there was no 'shock factor' at all. But this experience was different than my 'Captain' experience. It seemed impossible to ignore the greater context...even if I don't fully understand it or haven't been exposed to it. But if I had ignored Darwin and his references and the context...I think that would have been less satisfying of an experience...