June 2004

Hailyn Nielsen • The Bold and the Beautiful

After reading my earlier journal entries, a friend wrote to congratulate me and offer constructive criticism on how to improve as a writer. But, I don’t think I have the imagination to entertain people: it’s too subjective. While a degree of creativity is required to do research, the work I’m used to doing is definitely more objective than subjective. Good results and a well-done experiment are undeniable and indisputable. There are a couple of experiments in biology that I would describe as beautiful. I often read and think about research science as an art form.

Both scientists and artists derive inspiration from the human state. Both emphasize the complications of death and love. Where a scientist might seek to engineer crops that could be grown in the arid, starving environment of Africa, an artist might make a statement.

There is one important difference: science is more independent, and scientists more dependent. Science has a life and destiny of its own. Whereas art is at the mercy of the artists, science uses scientists to make itself known.

No one but Picasso would or could have created Guernica. Yet, if Crick and Watson hadn’t discovered the structure of DNA, Franklin and Wilkins probably would have done so in a matter of months. Science builds upon itself and discovery is inevitable. No scientist can truly claim any work or experiment as solely his own. I will admit a few exceptions, one being Einstein. His theories were/are so original, that probably no one else could have come up with them.

Art is timeless, but science ages. Germ theory could only have developed after the disproving of spontaneous generation and the invention of the microscope. The discovery of penicillin could never have preceded the acceptance of germ theory. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria could not have evolved before the widespread use of antibiotics.

Each day further entrenches science in society. With the discovery of antibiotics, people stopped dying young of infection and started dying of cancer. When or if we deal with that, a new problem will arise. And science will be there to tell us what it is, what it does, and how we can cure it.

And here’s why I love microbiology. When we introduced penicillin, we gave birth to penicillin-resistant bugs. When we started spilling toxins into the earth and groundwater, we effected the evolution of bugs that can live off the stuff. Microbes intrinsically are infinitely more survivable then humans—in my opinion, they are the more advanced form of life.

In terms of evolution, they’ve been around billions of years longer and they change faster than us. Already, they demonstrate their versatility. Halophiles persist in salt concentrations that would kill any other organism. Thermophiles flourish at temperatures that destroy the biological processes of all other life. These are beautiful examples of the efficiency and buoyancy of life. I find the mechanisms of their metabolism and the machinery of their survival breathtaking and beautiful.

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