Synthesizing organic compounds in a laboratory. That is what won Heck, Negishi, and Suzuki the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. But it is more than chemistry, I think. More than Chemistry just like Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams" was More than Psychology. It is a symbol of the coming era. What could be more apropos? We've been living in the Age of Silicon in its many forms for the last half century. Silicon, so similar to carbon in many ways with the four electrons of its outer shell available for chemical bonding, allowed chemists to produce synthetic compounds of tremendous importance--cement, glass, and, of course, silicone which is vitally important in aesthetic enhancements (oh, and computer chips, too). What would the world have been without Carol Doda?
What possibilities lie ahead? Surely things that will save the world, fix the environment, and make life generally more tolerable for all of us. But the literary potential is enormous. And without literature, where would science be? For science is controlled by the metaphors and symbols and master narratives just as all other knowledge is that has to be communicated. The Story of Water, for instance, is one every schoolchild learns. And believes. Big, hungry oxygen atoms finding little hydrogens floating around it, sharing it's electrons to form a compound with a dipolar moment, etc. It is a good story. Useful, too. Just like "The Jetsons."
You think I'm kidding, probably, but I'm not. Heck, Negishi, and Suzuki. Bigger than Salt and the polio vaccine. Just like Carol Doda, this will change the moral and ethical environment forever.
At the antique shop, I sell lots of books. I tend to buy the same books over and over because they always sell quickly -- Interpretation of Dreams being one (there are always copies at yard sales in libraries in homes here on the Cape it seems). I sold two last month.
ReplyDeleteSandburg's Lincoln Prairie and War Years are good bets too.
My son just declared his major (yesterday) Writing & Literature with a double minor in Biology and Poly Sci (with Honors distinction of course). He send me some links of what is I guess "Biology as Art" -- cells and stuff.
My good friend tells me machine is evolving into man. I ask if it isn't Man evolving into technology -- after all we are already biological machines.
Of course it is all the paradigms of language that trap us. We will have to make new categories. New categorical thinking.
ReplyDeleteYou and I, though, will still be romantics.