thank you for your comments on the post i put up regarding me being torn (sounds bloody, for a rosy v-day morning) between my passions. (to jess, yeah it is la jolla symphonic chorus. they are doing carmina burana next quarter.) the choir thing is just the surface of the problem. i'm perfectly aware that the 3 hrs/week and 2 nights of performance right before finals are not, with any luck, going to affect me that much. my problem really is doubting my own capacity as a scientist. i'm not wobbling between the sciences and the arts as a career. i never was. from the start i wanted science as a career. call me practical, and sometimes i do suspect that i've made that choices for practical reasons. but when i think further, i often realise that my passion IS in practicing the sciences, or in the desire to contribute to the sciences. i hope you could see the distinction between the two, but i can seldom differentiate them when i examine my own feelings towards science. it's more likely to be the latter.
my real worries are that my other passions indicate my inadequacy for science, because i do believe that there are gifts involved in the potential to succeed in the sciences, just like in every other field. and the gifts for the sciences and for the arts have really become so different or even opposite over the course of history since da Vinci. i posted Onnes' quote and Blake's print to show that successful scientists and artists are really opposite in personalities. and given a choice, i would not want to settle for being a mediocre scientist at the expense of being eloquent in other subjects. (i believe that the world is not made better by a flock of generalists, but a diverse group of specialists. even though i see myself really going down the drain of a generalist. ) that is, i would rather live without the desire to do other things.
(even if that means to abandon the immense joy that the arts bring me?)
you see, i'm so absolute a utilitarian. i see my life as a course leading to a certain end, which is all that's used to judge the success of my life itself. i wouldn't think that enjoyment along the course would count for anything, even though i enjoy the good of life so.
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5 comments:
wat nonsense u talking? dont be stuck in the murky talk of the past. pico says that god gave man the power of free will to be whatever he wants to be.
there is no such thing as an ideal personality for scientist or artist. different personality types contribute to both fields in different ways. what is appreciated now may be subsumed when the arts/sciences turns in yet another new direction. this is what we call progress. if everyone listens to the old men of past, each field will end up having the same type of pple. and the same type of thinking. and falling into the same (thinking) traps again.
we need variety. we need differences. we need mutations. i wonder what so many years (ok, not that many) of bio has taught u. evolution is based on variety of phenotypes!
crap
fm? emm, i dunno who fm is but 'variety talk' is rather interesting and I do believe science needs varieties n a world of imagination. Tree r u just worried you're gonna be a mediocre scientist? That your divergence of attention away from where you're supposed to be headed will affect that 'end' you're talking about? Don't worry, and actually specialization only comes in postgrad. by that time you'll have no choice but to concentrate and you'll prob find yourself rather adept n knowledgable. And just to add on to my point which might sound rather lame, in the end only a few people change the world as it is. I'm perfectly aware of my own weakness or potential, some defects in logical reasoning and what not and i've come to think of it as normal. I'm sure you're aware of yours too. That doesn't classify as inadequate or sth. Like what fm said, you've gotta believe there is at least that one aspect in you that will shine through (in the world of science) :) Except a handful of real geniuses we're all just normal pple who work their way thru and discover the truth. Cheer up and enjoy school and your passions too!!
thx. haha. i know these thoughts that i wrote down are kind of silly or maybe irrational. but sometimes we are just a little irrational aren't we? it's not that i'm not aware of what you said. in fact all these things that your brought up have always been what i use to defend myself all these years. it's just that for some reason i still have this very dark and, ok, irrational fear. normally i don't mention it. if not for the blog i would've never mentioned it to anyone. haha. well. i'll stop thinking about. maybe that helps too.
i disagree. again.
mention it. think abt it. dont fear the fear.
then get someone to knock on ur head and whack u upside down to get the wrong idea out of ur head, and the correct idea in, permanently.
i changed my blog's title to reflect a great leap in understanding i made during atterton's CAT lecture the other day. u are not who u are because of ur ability to think. u exist because of the thinking process itself.
u are thinking, therefore u are.
ah, you're fine. you're perfectly competent in the sciences. you can still pursue the arts.. doesn't mean you'll become a generalist that way. people can have multiple talents. like you!
see ya at the doc play.
-jessica
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