Seeing in the dark

I miss science. True, linguistics is a science of sorts, but I mean physics and chemistry and biology and math and all that. The hard sciences. Looking back, I think the last science class I took was Physical Science 100 my freshman year, almost six years ago. Wow.

Last night I went to the planetarium here on campus, and as I was watching the projected sky rotate across the ceiling, my old love of astronomy resurfaced. Going up to the dome and looking at Saturn through the 16″ telescope completely revivified it. You see, when I was a kid I was really into astronomy, reading up on it all the time and spending many an hour lying on the tramp in the backyard (the trampoline, that is, not the hobo), stargazing. I got giddy with excitement whenever a new issue of Odyssey showed up on the library shelves. Ah, those were the days.

Since then, my knowledge of the stars has mostly plateaued, with only the cosmological portion of PhyS 100 to push me higher. No longer! It’s time to rekindle that fire of interest and start devouring books on astrophysics and black holes and all that good stuff. Granted, I’ll have to wait till after I graduate, since I’ve got around 40 books on my desk right now, all with bookmarks at varied spots. Wait. Can I really wait? Nah. :) In fact, I’ve already started reading one book, Claudia Dreifus’s Scientific Conversations. It’s a collection of 38 interviews with all sorts of scientists, and I’m really liking it so far. I’ve also got another book, called Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth from Interplanetary Peril. I’m looking forward to that one.

And of course astronomy will lead to physics, which will lead to chemistry, which will circle back to biology, and then who knows where? Geology and geography are sounding like dessert. It’s a never-ending dinner of delights, with new flavors and textures on every plate. And the best part? You never get sick from eating too much.

This is what librarians do, after all. I still can’t believe people get paid to do this. ;)

I have been complaining all semester that I miss math and science. As an English major, I feel I have a right to do so. As it is, I am in a boiled-down physical science class right now, which helps, but I miss the act of doing mathematics. It used a different part of my brain (and was always more work for me than language and literature and artsy-type things), which I now feel is shrinking. I took calculus as a high school junior, and now I panic at the thought of a complex algebraic equation. What good is that?
It is true that we can’t know everything, which has always been a setback for me. I am interested in everything (except perhaps anime).
The thing is, in high school, though I resented having to take “required” classes, the balance of scientific/mathematic and arts/language classes gave me just that: balance.

Maybe that is why one of my favorite magazines is Discover.

Balance is good. And I agree with you: doing math uses a part of the brain that rarely gets used by the humanities, and it feels so good (well, it does when you can figure the problems out :)). I need to figure out a comprehensive, cross-discipline plan of study for after I graduate — math, biology, chemistry, physics, anthropology, geography, geology, botany, meteorology, history, economics, statistics, you name it. Mmm. I seriously can’t wait. (And yes, anime is surprisingly uninteresting to me as well. I tried watching Howl’s Moving Castle a couple months ago but couldn’t stand it after ten minutes. Oh well.)