Category: Books

"Write what you know" remains one of the most common pieces of writing advice – although one that often requires experience to stick. With the desire to appear professional, and with professors grading along their chosen literary styles, learning writing often begins as imitation. But equally so, writers who persists reach a vital moment of giddy insubordination where they stop emulating Raymond Carver or whichever literary idol, cast aside their guilt of autobiographical writing and put their own thoughts on the page. While this might be the bias of the author, I believe that given practice and development, the cadence of your own speech, the textures of your dreams, and your own storehouse of memories can prove just as valid as any writer in the canon. You can be an anthropologist of your own mind and have enough to write a career.

This is, of course, an encouragement to write fiction, but it's also an introduction to Andrea Barret, whose historical short story collection Ship Fever could come from experience or research alike. Is she a scientist writing what she knows? Or did she write her way into science?

The answer seems to be both. According to her website, Barret has a degree in biology and according to Wikipedia, she started, but did not finish, a PHD in zoology, beginning writing in her thirties. Regardless, the stories collected here represent a masterly understanding of pace, perspective, and empathy-building. The main character of "Rare Bird," for example, is wealthy enough to be educated in the 18th century, but despite her cosseted upbringing is still not privileged, as a woman with the mind of a scientist but no outlet for career. Or take the doctor in "Ship Fever," who is motivated by jealousy to wake from his academic complacency and devote himself to a public health crisis. This character turns questionable motivation into ethical action – but pays the cost.

More than most fiction, the stories in "Ship Fever" narrate the actual problems of science. For example, several focus on the Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus, a towering figure considered "the father of modern taxonomy" but who still clung to mistaken beliefs, like that swallows hibernated in lake bottoms during the winter: a "fact" anchored in Aristotle and propagated by hearsay. This reminded me of Einstein, a luminary who forced a cosmological constant into his theories – not because of scientific reasoning but assumption and later called this his "greatest blunder." When the narrator of "Rare Birds" argues with Linnaeus, Barret glorifies her narrator's thinking but does not disparage her opponent. Bias and pre-conceptions come naturally, even to the scientists among us.

In various ways, all of these stories ask "what is the cost of real science?" What toll is extracted from those opposing orthodoxy? The doctor in "Ship Fever" cannot find patients because, unlike his contemporizes, he does not believe in bloodletting. What happens when an adherence to truth costs a career? We so easily chide yesterday's mistakes but falter when assessing our own, especially when the stakes reach the ultimate. Both "Ship Fever" and a previous Humanities Highlights, The Ghost Map, subject the battle of ideas to the pressures of plague and death, where we cling to the familiar until we can't.

Even still, her collection echoes other Humanities Highlights as well, like The Knife Man, which detailed John Hunter's grisly early surgery techniques; techniques that may have helped bring about reason-based and inductive surgery practices, but came at the expense of true boundary-crossings. Body-snatching, boiling down human remains, tasting bodily fluids, etc. In her own stories, Barret assesses the gamble of science here. What if Hunter's acts had not led to any medical advance? What would that have made him? Similarly, while killing and preserving specimens in the Amazon, the naturalist in "Birds Without Feet" fills journals with details but never arrives at a theory. Did he kill – and numb himself to the process of cutting up bodies – for nothing?

Unanimously, her characters MUST go out and see – and unanimously, they pay the cost of doing so. A Hollywood narrative would have her characters facing the odds and eventually vindicated (maybe even after substantial periods of neglect), their efforts acknowledged and bettering the world. Barret rarely grants her characters such consolation. Linnaeus sends his pupils out to taxonomize the globe, and almost all catch foreign diseases and die. The aforementioned naturalist in "Birds Without Feet" leaves his home and upbringing and does not succeed. The young woman in "Rare Bird" abandons the family manor to practice science in America, but we never learn what came of her. Even Barret's non-science-based narratives repeat this motif; two biologists abandon their marriages only to be disappointed with the life they bought for themselves.

Of course, both the successes and sacrifices of science must be motivated one way or the other (and many do not know whether they succeeded or not, like Gregor Mendel, another of Barret's subjects), but by what? In Einstein's famous speech for the birthday of Max Planck, "Principles of Research," he posits three types of scientists: the careerists, the utilitarians, and those driven by necessity. Einstein extols Planck as the last but does not spell out the cost for those driven this way, which is often great.

This is not to discourage anyone from their chosen career but to advocate for fiction to fill the gap. Fear, betrayal, lapses in memory, failure – these are fiction's terrain and given their full due in Ship Fever. The scientist might fail to discover a theory but find a story nonetheless. The artist cannot determine which stories they can honestly capture, but they should not tire in dipping their nets, just as the scientist (should they find themselves motivated to do so), should not stop witnessing – and thinking through – their world. The writers who develop their own voice and the scientist who validates their theories are those who persist as such. At the very least, excellent fiction like Andrea Barret's gives shape to our often-shapeless narratives and can help us assess our own motivations and whether, like the characters within, we must go out and see.

"I tell her how humiliated I am that I can't deal with it myself. I confess my hypocrisy, professing that I can help other people when I am such a mess myself. She responds that some of the best therapists are the ones with the most darkness in their lives" (Manning, 1994, p. 70).

The phrase "physician heal yourself" survived because of the Bible, but it occurs only in the gospel of Luke, which makes sense, as tradition considers Luke a doctor. Entertaining tradition, one can easily imagine the memory of this phrase – in the research done for his books – to be triggered by the author's profession. In modern times, the saying has come to mean something like, 'Take care of yourself, those who take care of others,' which of course is a valid and necessary concept, but simultaneously quite different from its original context. From the biblical story, we can ascertain that the proverb was used to call out quacks, i.e.: 'if you're selling a cure, prove it on yourself, and then we'll believe you.' For better or worse, Jesus rejects the demand, as did the author of the work selected for this Humanities Highlights: psychologist and depression-sufferer Martha Manning – albeit it with far more turbulence. I thought of both meanings when reading her fantastic mental health memoir, Undercurrents.

The book opens as a domestic comedy, with Manning describing her too-stuffed life with self-deprecating wit and a solid sense of scene making. It could be a family movie – tagline: woman has great career and family, if she can keep the plates spinning! – except for the darkness hinted beneath the surface, the titular "undercurrents," recounted through childhood memories and stories of her grandmother.

The opening allows us to appreciate her sensibilities before we dive into her depression, demonstrating the high contrast of lights and darks that can color the life of the depressed, and preempting stereotypes of the mentally unwell in the process.

As a psychologist herself, Manning suppresses guilt about her own depression, wondering how she can serve her patients while feeling "like an orthopedist in a full body cast giving consultation to someone with a broken leg" (p. 84). But with gumption and high tolerance, she pushes through – until she can't. She seeks treatment, beginning with talk therapy before cycling through SSRIs, and when those don't work, electing to try Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT).

The assistant head nurse gives me a tour and asks how I have gotten so depressed. I stare at her blankly and can't find the words. She might as well ask me why I have brown hair or why I'm not taller. I tell her that I am mostly depressed about being depressed. Her expression informs me that this clearly is not the correct answer. . . . She says dubiously, "Dr. Samuel said you are a psychologist," as if somehow that should make me more articulate about my pain. I reply sheepishly that I am a psychologist but that I'm not very good, in the hopes that this will explain any deficits in my clinical presentation. (p. 111)

But pain, by its very nature, is inarticulate. A burned hand may provoke a life time of philosophy but in the moment hardly prompts more than a monosyllable. The grammar of psychotherapy can only push a DIY mental health intervention so far, but Manning's guilt is understandable. Burdened by their own authority, healers risk this sense of guilty and maybe even fraudulence.

When used to suss out charlatans, "Physician heal yourself" may have limited merit, but clearly, a surgeon – outside of some remote disaster, getting crushed under a boulder when no one else is around – would not perform surgery on themselves. Nor would the dentist fill their own tooth. But when it comes to the mind, it's easy to assume we can operate on ourselves. This should not be.

We all need other people – and their expertise. We do not know everything, and sometimes we experience mental blocks that others can help us hurdle. But, because Manning undergoes these experiences, she is better able to understand the patient's humiliation. She lightens the pressure to dispense insight and better learns when she just needs to "look squarely at people's pain" (p. 172).

It's a great book, one whose application greatly exceeds the particulars that germinated it.

References: 

In his latest book, Francis Collins – former NIH director, leader of the Human Genome Project, and evangelical author of books like "The Language of God" – aims to extend the work of the Braver Angels organization and "unwarp" a country distorted by "divisiveness and politics" (p. 8).

While his discussions range across his own research experience, social media, the Covid-19 pandemic, global warming, and election fraud, as this is a library blog, I intend to focus on the assessment of information and why we believe what we believe.

Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust in the Internet Age

Collins positions truth, science, faith and trust as the key building-blocks of wisdom. And while he does not explicitly state this; these qualities benefit internet-age humans because they increase the friction of information intake.

Truth requires examining evidence. Science requires forming and testing hypotheses. Faith requires meditation to better discern the good. And perhaps most controversially (as many have lost trust in almost every institution), trust requires research and – unless we want to live a paranoid, isolated life – an informed, but unquantifiable, leap.

The road to wisdom is long.

Clearly, one cannot practice this level of critical engagement without drastically reducing the flow of information. Five minutes of reels could prompt five hours of research. But this is good: better to be well-versed in a little than deluded about a lot.

No one has the time research everything, of course, which raises the question of what we need to know, what we feel we know, and what we actually know, which takes us to the next point.

Anger and Algorithms

Inspired by Jonathan Haidt's Atlantic article, "Why the Last Ten Years Have Been Uniquely Stupid," Collins discusses the shift towards toxicity in social media: for example, when Facebook added the "like" button, this generated extensive insight about the fastest-spreading content (with anger emerging as the most viral emotion) – and allowed tailoring around this engagement.

Practically speaking, this means, unless a user actively shapes their experience, they will very likely be served endless amounts of rage.

Anger tightly couples with certainty, and certainty feels good. But this creates a gap in our thinking where other people's anger implicitly conveys a certainty that might be unearned – or may even mask duplicity.

Considering that platforms want to maximize profit and political agents want to weaponize our attention, this should cast serious doubts about much of what we learn on social media. At the very least, this calls for higher standards for ourselves and our information diet.

What We Believe and Why

When discussing truth, Collins invokes the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine's "web theory" of beliefs, which helps an individual map their ideas and values based on certainty: with the most evidence-based and conclusive in the middle and the most speculative on the edges.

While the diagram itself could be substituted, the model forces people to assess why they believe something. Can we state the evidence behind our beliefs, and have we learned to extrapolate reasonable conclusions from the evidence? If we haven't, why do we believe it?

Moreover, Quine's "web" increases self-awareness of our hierarchy of beliefs. Somewhat paradoxically, our most thought-out beliefs will likely also be our most defended, as these central strands support the rest of the web. But sometimes defense becomes obstinacy and blindness. A scientist who's staked their career on a theory, for example, might be hostile towards other theories. Self-knowledge of our values is invaluable as we approach good faith dialogue. Webs – and worldviews – can be re-spun.

And as we assess our own beliefs, this better equips us to assess online (and offline) content. What are their sources? Motivations for espousing their beliefs? Do they bear the hallmarks of competence and expertise? Can they stand up to scrutiny?

Identity, Aligned Values, and the Book

Part of "unwarping" America involves discussions "across the aisle:" the purpose of the Braver Angels dialogues in general. In an increasingly complex world, tribalism simplifies the complexity, but at a cost. We should have higher standards for evidence than appeals to tribal identity.

That being said, Christians will most likely find Collins credible, which he's aware of. He cites a study where 2000 Christian participants were instructed about the Covid-19 vaccine by health experts, Collins included; some participants were also shown footage of Collins discussing his Christian faith. These showed markedly higher rates of vaccine participation (p. 189).

This appeal to tribal identity – as a Christian who affirms the evidence of global warming, for example – is a secondary good (although it could certainly help heal divisions). Ultimately, though, Collins wishes to transcend this appeal to identity and to train others to do likewise. Whether or not he succeeds, his work is a good prompting to assess our information intake and why we hold our beliefs, as well as inspiration to find good faith discussions, learn to listen, and embody the spirit of a healthy democracy.

References:

Collins, F. S. (2024). The road to wisdom : on truth, science, faith, and trust. Little, Brown and Company.