About Biomythic
Scientific facts do not interpret themselves. We instead interpret them. We determine their importance, connect them to theory and decide how our society should accommodate these facts about our world discovered by science. Because we are contained in nature our interpretation of the natural world reveals us to ourselves. This process is not value neutral; bias creeps in along the way, but we often have a hard time demarcating the line between fact and interpretation. True objectivity is likely a fool’s quest, but critical reflection on our scientific narratives is not.
Origin Story
I can trace my first thinking on Biomythic to a single genetics lecture in college many years ago…
On that day, my ears perked up during a lecture when the professor spoke of DNA polymerase making a ‘mistake’ in base pair matching in the process of DNA transcription leading to a mutation. My college-self wondered on what basis can we call it a ‘mistake’ when we are talking about molecules? Don’t molecules just do what molecules do? If they can make mistakes, then this implies they have agency or choice. From these simple questions lead to a broader inquiry of how language is used in science.
What I write about
On Biomythic I write about language and theory in science, examining the boundary between empirical fact and our interpretations of those facts. I focus on some of the following topics:
Scientific models. As the British statistician George E. P. Box once said “All models are wrong but some are useful”. Here I cover the usefulness and limitations of some scientific models. Where do they clarify? How might they mislead?
Science analogies. Analogies are widely used in science reasoning and science education. I critically examine these analogies - particularly those explanatory analogies found in education and journalism.
Science metaphors. Metaphors in science can be novel or so embedded in prevailing theory they are no longer regarded as metaphors. I look at both types.
Other scientific discourse. Figures of speech communicated through similes, synecdoche, metonymy, polysemy and personification are some of the many other ways we talk about science. We can ask what these figures of speech reveal about our natural world, and what they conceal.
Scientific myths. Particularly popular falsehoods stemming from misinterpretation of science broadly propagated or from errors in earlier scientific works - sometimes used to peddle goods with a limited base of evidence to support them.
Reinterpretation of classical myths, fables, allegories from a scientific vantage point or as a thought experiment. Myths have been superseded by science as explaining the world. I look at some ancient myths, connecting them to current issues in science. I discuss how observation of nature was the basis of many myths in ancient times and how we might reimagine myths or embed mystery and reverence in our scientific conception of the world.
My background in this subject
I have had the opportunity to work and learn across a variety of fields including health, education, energy and the environment and technology. Much of what I write in Biomythic got started in the course of completing my doctoral dissertation on analogical reasoning in science education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I have written about these topics recently in other publications such as Neo.Life, Salon (with a colleague) and Think Global Health.
My Approach
All of my writing is aimed at developing a knack for metacognition (thinking about thinking) and scrutiny of science whether found in scientific articles, the popular press or educational materials. I try to make the case that the assumptions embedded in our language around science matter and when we bring awareness to this often unrecognized language we can choose whether to continue to use this language to frame issues or choose to introduce new conceptions that still fit the empirical data.
As Marshall McLuhan famously said, “the medium is the message”. And the medium here is email. My goal is not to be a drag on people’s inboxes - another message to be flagged or deleted, so my articles tend to be short and (hopefully) easy to read. Hence the pieces I write here are microdoses or aphorisms offered as intellectual tapas but not entrées. It is in dialogue with you, my readers, that over time I hope to more fully sketch the space and bring about a broader understanding of what I consider to be an under-appreciated subject.
Why I care
When world leaders declared a war on COVID-19 (A subject I have written on before in other outlets) all subsequent discussions assumed a war footing. Yet we did not need to frame the effort to confront the spread of COVID-19 as a ‘war’. There were pros and cons of such a framing, but left unanalyzed, all of our choices were already bound by that particular frame. There are many such examples of framing metaphors in science, science education and science in public policy. Recognizing these covert framings allows us to not simply to operate within the circumscribed space dictated by that framing but to question its initial assumptions. In such a way, we can potentially be more creative in how we understand science, how science education takes place, and how societies make choices around crucial topics that are informed by science.
Why you may be interested in these writings
Nearly everyone is aware of the precipice human society rests on. Climate change is the most widely known of these issues, but scientists have proposed multiple boundary conditions for critical environment processes, and we are nearing or exceeding the boundary on every one of them.
If all of life on earth is compressed to one 24 hour day, humans have arrived on earth in the last minute. Can you imagine humans persisting another minute, let alone another hour or another day? If we want to understand how nature has persisted, we need to look to nature itself.
And how to accomplish these monumental tasks to build a more sustainable world and society? Reforming the language we use is relatively easy within the list of Herculean tasks. With a few exceptions, most figures of speech in science don’t have special interest groups lobbying to protect them. We protect them instead when we leave them unexamined, when we uncritically see them as synonymous with scientific fact and theory and when we teach students with them indoctrinating a chosen world view. Metaphors, models, analogies and myths then are a point of system leverage with limited resistance in a broader effort to build a society that is not separate from, and therefore is sustainable with, nature. Because figures of speech function covertly in science and science discourse, they can be replaced with few being the wiser as most only associate them with poetry. But figurative language runs deep. It is not merely an embellishment of language but the very structure of thought.
