understand science

I’m taking this off my list for now and putting it on my someday/maybe list. I think, at the moment, it’s really important for me to develop my creative side and express myself in various types of art. I’m not saying science isn’t creative, but there’s a limit to how many goals I can actively work on at once and this isn’t a big one for me at the moment! One day I hope to become the perfect fusion of artist and scientist! till then…

At the moment I’m reading Krakatoa by Simon Winchester. It’s about the eruption of the volcano on the Indonesian island in 1883 which was so violent it actually blasted the island itself out of existence and created some awful tsunamis which killed thousands of people. Actually, I’ve read this book before but since I have trouble remembering factual details (especially anything which involves numbers) I decided to read it again. It’s taking me a while though. It’s well-written but most of the science is geology, which I’ve discovered I don’t actually find all that interesting. The meteorology bits are nice though.

I did a brainstorm – also known as a BS (!) – of scientific fields I’m interested in.

I came up with: herbal medicine (linked to chemistry), quantum physics, computer science (my bf is a computer scientist and it would be nice to have a deeper understanding of his work), psychology/behavioral science, musicology (not sure if this is actually a science, or if it even exists! I’m thinking along the lines of the maths inherent in musical structures and also maybe how they affect us physiologically), biology (especially marine), climatology, botany, general physics, atrophysics, meteorology and agronomy.

So I’m going to start doing reading in these subjects. At the moment I’m reading The Cloudspotter’s Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney which is a charming book and very funny, but also has a good lot of physics and meteorology in it. I’m starting to become really facinated by clouds and the challenge of being able to identify them – maybe even start being able to predict the weather!

Well I think that of all things on this earth the one I most would like to do is to understand. Science seems like a vehicle to do that. It’s everything and still nothing. The logic we’ve found this strange place to obey which will still fail to fully comprehend. Maybe we even fear it… I guess that my goal isn’t to fully understand science because that would be impossible. It would steal to mystery of this enigma…instead I want to understand science to the best of my ability in any way I can in order to better help the rest of the world.

So where do I start? A book, a movie, a conversation, a life? Is there really a start and end or is it a life journey?

I consider myself to be primarily artistic rather than scientific. I have an extremely strong desire to express myself artistically. I’m interested in science too, I guess partially because I believe in finding a balance. Although, a lot of the time, science simply baffles me. I would like to explore science more, understand what it is, and what it means.

My bf (the scientist) has become much more artistic lately. He’s taken up pencil sketching and drumming as hobbies. He’s done more, in concrete terms, than I have in reaching for the other extreme.

Perhaps I should identify fields of science that interest me and investigate them. Start off with a brainstorm…