As I was reading Galen Strawson’s article, I found that I didn’t agree with some of the points that he was making. For example, he stated how he doesn’t think that ‘autobiographical narrative’ plays any significant role in how he views the world and thinks that it is mostly influenced by his upbringing. Although this could be a valid argument, I feel that experiences could help you learn and could help create an overall deeper understanding of yourself. Also, he made the point that even though he has a poor memory, he still has a respectable amount of knowledge about his life. When I read this, I felt that telling stories would help him to remember events in his life that he may have otherwise forgotten. Whether it would be a story that he would want to repress or share a good memory, that story still plays a role in his life story. I know that he later makes the point to live life in the present without worrying about the past, but without reflecting on these events in your life you wouldn’t learn from your mistakes.

Although I didn’t agree with some of his points about the results of not remembering stories, there are benefits to not remembering. For example, he stated, “poor memory protects him from a disagreeable form of ambition, stops him babbling and forces him to think for himself because he can’t remember what others have said”. I thought this was an interesting idea because when I think of narrative, I think of personal stories that shape your identity, but disregard the fact that there are also negative events occurring in your life that you don’t want to remember, but sometimes do because of sharing.

For myself, I feel that I haven’t been impeded by my life story because I haven’t had a diverse amount of experiences yet. Although I have had a few impactful stories in my life that would play a significant role in my life story, I obviously will expect more events to occur as I get older. 

In the article “Life Stories” by Julie Beck, she mentioned many different aspects that play a role in the way that we tell our personal stories and how the way that we tell stories to change as we get older. One of the notable assertions that Beck stated in her article was that she mentioned: “not only are there individual differences in how people think of their stories, there’s huge variation in the degree to which they engage in storytelling in the first place”. This quote stood out to me because I was able to create a connection to myself. It reminded me of how my friend and I share stories with each other and how the way she tells the stories that we both experienced is different from the way that I tell them. Another quote that I found interesting in her article was when she stated, “the way that people recount experiences to others seems to shape the way they end up remembering those events”. This reminded me of the idea of how people could experience an event in their lives but then recount that experience with incorrect facts, which Beck mentioned later in the article. This idea is interesting because like I mentioned before, when my friend and I retell each other stories from high school, we sometimes notice that one person remembers the story including different facts than what actually occurred. The last quote that caught my eye was when Beck mentioned how in Alder and Pasupathi’s studies how “people need to see themselves as actors to a certain degree…other people play a big role in shaping life stories”. I liked how Beck combined the two studies to come to the conclusion that other people also play a big role in an individual’s life story. I reacted as a believer to this quote because an individual’s life is influenced more by their relationships with others and isn’t just based on the individual’s own decisions. 

For this exercise, I used the first writing prompt that we did that was about metaphors.  I found that I use “for example” and “for instance” regularly because these phrases appear in almost every paragraph that I have written for this particular piece. Also, when I am writing for other classes like biology, when we have to write lab reports these phrases are almost always in my writing. In one of my paragraphs from this last essay we wrote on metaphors, I found that I used the word “also”, and pointer words like “this”, often to connect my thoughts together as well. I feel that I use these specific phrases often because they help me get my point across simply and allow me to supply examples to support my claims in an easy way. One of the passages that were hard to follow in my essay was the concluding paragraph. It feels like I didn’t thoroughly connect my thoughts and that they are just random sentences placed next to each other. To make it easier to read, instead of mentioning the word “metaphor” in almost every sentence, I could have made it easier to read by relating the sentences to each other and building off of them to construct a better conclusion. Also, adding words like “therefore” or more pointer words like “these” and “this” could have helped connect the concepts that were discussed better.

Blog post #10: Share your choice quotes that support your debate stance and list at least 2 items of supporting evidence

For Inviting Art into The Scientific Process.
Creating analogies to better understand science:

Pinker Article Quote: “A consilience with science offers the humanities countless possibilities for innovation in understanding. Art, culture, and society are products of human brains” (Pinker 10). By allowing art to be integrated with our education, it could make certain topics easier to understand and grasp by creating analogies. For example, in biology, my professor strives to make the many different comparisons of scientific ideas like comparing competitive inhibitors of enzymes to someone inserting and breaking a stick into a lock. This way of learning allows us to create imagery of the scenario in simpler terms.

Yo-Yo Ma Article Quote:

“Only when those meridians or pathways that connect the edges to the middle are open will a life-form survive, and even prosper. Only when science and the arts, critical and empathetic reasoning, are linked to the mainstream will we find a sustainable balance in society” (Ma 4). In this quote, Ma describes how there needs to be a combination of the arts with science to create an equilibrium where they can both be integrated equally, and ideas can be shared through both topics. If these two topics or any topics, in general, didn’t overlap, many ideas would still be unsolved today. For example, Lehrer mentioned in his article how some ideas in neuroscience were unsolved, but by combining art with science they were able to be resolved.

Lehrer Article Quote:

Involving the arts with science can lead to new discoveries:

“Its goal will be to cultivate a positive feedback loop, in which works of art lead to new scientific experiments, which lead to new works of art and so on” (Lehrer 7). By involving art with the scientific process, it could lead to new discoveries to be made and could allow scientists to think outside the box. By creating a “fourth culture”, science and art can be combined, and both can be used to explain theories and create different questions. By forming new questions, scientists will be able to conduct different experiments and find new truths about the world and its functions.

The two authors, Steven Pinker and Jonah Lehrer, both argued their views on how science should be integrated with the arts and how the arts could ultimately prompt new discoveries to be made within the field of science. Pinker in his article “Science is Not Your Enemy” described the idea of how science is necessary for society to find out the complex processes of life. Also, he mentions this issue by stating, “The commitment to intelligibility is not a matter of brute faith, but gradually validates itself more and more of the world becomes explicable in scientific terms” (Pinker 4).  In this quote, he describes how scientists are able to discover more and more about the world and could help humanity explain things that we couldn’t before. These complex discoveries could be made by scientists with the help of other influences such as art. Lehrer also believed that incorporating science with the arts is an essential way that new topics for discoveries are made. He even went to the lengths that even metaphors could help lead to new ideas. He states, “The power of a metaphor is that it allows scientists to imagine the abstract concept in concrete terms so that they can grasp the implications of their mathematical equations. The world of our ideas is framed by the only world we know” (Lehrer 5).  He implies that the use of metaphors has allowed humanity to advance this far and making these simple comparisons has led to many new discoveries to be made. They both agree that science and the arts could help answer complex questions that we have not been able to answer yet and could help society advance.

Pinker connection

In the future, I have not yet decided whether I want to become a dentist or an optometrist, but I know that both of these fields will be difficult and will involve utilizing many different ways of grasping the topics like using sculptures, diagrams, and comparisons to fully understand these topics. “A consilience with science offers the humanities countless possibilities for innovation in understanding. Art, culture, and society are products of human brains” (Pinker 10). Using comparisons and metaphors will be very important to me as I continue to advance through my education and hope that they will be taught to me to simplify complex topics in my science classes. This is already starting to occur in my biology class where my professor always tries to create comparisons or analogies that are related to the topics we are learning. For example, he related the ideas of potential and kinetic energy in the cell to a drawing of a strength tester carnival game so that we would be able to easily understand the topic by relating it to something we already know. I hope that I will continue to make these connections and comparisons to aid my education in the future.

Jonah Lehrer’s main argument in his essay was that he believes science and art shouldn’t be seen as two separate ideas, but instead should  Throughout the text, he listed many specific examples and related art pieces by artists like Picasso to the Bohr model. He used these examples to create imagery and allow the readers to think that the arts provide visual representations of scientific ideas even if they aren’t intended to. Also, he mentioned how these art pieces can allow scientists to think of new ideas and make new discoveries. Along with this, he also described how metaphors can be used to simplify ideas and could help us better understand topics that are complex, even though they might not be accurate representations.  Art allows scientists to think of what they couldn’t see before or break larger ideas and view them in greater detail.

Glossing:

Synapse: The point at which a nerve impulse passes from now neuron to the other, allows communication with the target cell

Epiphenomenon: A secondary phenomenon accompanying another/caused by it

Holistic perspective: Taking different factors into account to get a larger image of culture

J

My annotations feel like they are improving, and I found that I am making more connections. I still feel like I need to work on asking questions while reading.

1. The essay, “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy and Education” by Yo-Yo Ma was published in January 2014 on the World Post blog. I noticed that Ma’s bio included many of his accomplishments including the fact that he attended Harvard University and won more than 17 Grammy awards. These achievements show that has the experience to be addressing these ideas in his essay.
2. My purpose for reading this text was to learn more about how meaningful it is to incorporate art with education in general and that it should be done more frequently. In the piece, Ma described how it is valuable to include art because it can help you develop balanced thinking. I agree with Main his stance because I was involved in the band program from elementary school until I was a senior in high school. His stance on this issue is relatable. I also think that it is important to acknowledge that art is involved in many of the topics that we already learn but aren’t directly told that they are related.
3. Throughout the essay, Ma stressed the importance of how art being integrated into education (STEAM), should be implemented more. It could create balanced thinking and help influence the student’s creativity. By being exposed to art, it could also help people become cultured and want to learn about other countries.

Glossing Words

Virtuosos: Highly skilled in music or another artistic pursuit

Meridians: The center or middle

Lewd: Crude and offensive