"Science deals with universals, formulating general statements that are true always and everywhere. There is a science of trees, describing the basic properties shared by all trees, but there can be no science of this individual black walnut in the corner of the garden."
This has become something of a crisis in my own life as a practicing scientist. There is something tragic about approaching a thing you love with the tools of generalization and abstraction, only to find yourself embracing a phantom of words or numbers, more distant than ever from the true object of your affection. A distinction between the "no-thing" of generalization and "nothing" of nihilism may ultimately be hard to maintain.
Is there, then, a way to practice science with joy and childlike wonder, somehow bracketing off its dismal abstraction while harnessing its insights unto a richer enjoyment and closer approach of real things?
"Science deals with universals, formulating general statements that are true always and everywhere. There is a science of trees, describing the basic properties shared by all trees, but there can be no science of this individual black walnut in the corner of the garden."
This has become something of a crisis in my own life as a practicing scientist. There is something tragic about approaching a thing you love with the tools of generalization and abstraction, only to find yourself embracing a phantom of words or numbers, more distant than ever from the true object of your affection. A distinction between the "no-thing" of generalization and "nothing" of nihilism may ultimately be hard to maintain.
Is there, then, a way to practice science with joy and childlike wonder, somehow bracketing off its dismal abstraction while harnessing its insights unto a richer enjoyment and closer approach of real things?