No dry science lecture, but a talk on “slanted truth” and independent spirit.
At Founders Day this year, internationally-recognized cell biology researcher Lynn Margulis spoke not about cell biology, her research specialty, but about Emily Dickinson. The audience was surprised and delighted as Margulis spun together threads of biology, environmentalism, poetry, mythology, and mysticism, to remind us that independent critical thinking is humanity's salvation against arrogance.
Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Margulis was this year's honorary degree recipient. She is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and 1999 recipient of the National Medal of Science.
Margulis spoke about the importance of a liberal arts education, which can help us become aware of how our culture's prevailing mythology, or thought collective, influences our behavior. For example, we tend to think that development — “converting more and more land into more and more space for people” — is a good thing.
Long committed to making science more accessible to the general public, she wondered aloud, “Why, when we know it's not in our best interest, do we chop down all the trees, put PCBs in the Hudson River, destroy the environment at the rate we do?” Mystical thinking has also played a role in the catastrophic growth in human population, she said. Our mythology has to change before alternative “truths” can be widely accepted and acted on.
And there's the cherished myth of productivity, and its concomitant misguided belief that humans are superior to other life forms. Commented Margulis, only autotrophs – organisms that make their own food and energy from sunlight – are productive: “Without them, there is no productivity, no biosphere.”
Animals are cooperative by nature, with altruistic behavior common among them. Sometimes, she said, quoting nature photographer and writer Reg Morrison, animal behavior is preferable to human behavior, ” 'free of the tedious sermonizing and self-congratulation of the prattling prodigy that is the human race.' ”
She recited from memory several poems of Amherst “neighbor” Emily Dickinson — “a person of great independent spirit.” She concluded that what Dickinson wrote about understanding nature was meant for all the biologists in the audience: “Those who know her, know her less, the nearer that they get.'”
A second highlight of the celebration of the College's 206th birthday came when Lakshmi Rao, chemistry teacher at Brighton High School in Rochester, N. Y., received the Gideon Hawley Teacher Recognition Award. She walked up to the lectern, holding hands with her former student Rosabeth Kriegler, now a Union College sophomore and electrical engineering major, who had nominated her.
Kriegler's nomination read, in part, “Dr. Rao helped me not only to appreciate how important math and science are, but she also taught me the virtue of patience and understanding…. We watched her get sick [with throat cancer], and we were there at the end of the year when she recovered. She was someone to look up to, being strong in both mind and body …. She taught me more than chemistry, she taught me how to learn from life.”