Over the summer, my cousin had me tutor her in English. Mind
you, she isn’t in elementary school or high school, she was
Popeye applying to medical school, and I was going to be her MCAT
can of spinach.
Or maybe that’s just what I tried to tell myself. It soon
became clear that her verbal ability was lacking, and she
didn’t like the fact that understanding literature had no
formula.
My cousin is outgoing and smart, yet she couldn’t infer an
author’s tone for her life. Meanwhile, her science section
practice scores were skyrocketing. Reflecting this, she asked,
“Why do we need to do close readings and writings anyways?
It’s pointless. Just give me a scalpel and I can do the
work.” She wasn’t joking.
It didn’t occur to her that science can learn as much from
art as it can from a test tube. It’s normal to declare
something meaningless when you stink at it. It’s scary when
you use that to invalidate the entire enterprise of cultural
literacy. She couldn’t see the forest and realize that
science is merely one of many trees.
You can see this subtle single-mindedness in the physical makeup
of South Campus. The concrete sprawls through the South Campus
plaza while the botanical garden is contained in a fenced area,
lest it try to invade the sterile structures around it.
You’re even reminded of science in the South Campus eatery,
the Bombshelter, which mixes pizza and nuclear holocaust paranoia
to make a pleasant lunch. It’s no mistake that the main piece
of art in a place so intently focused on creating a confined void
is an earwax sculpture.
OK, this desire for purity of academic precision doesn’t
limit itself to South Campus. In fact, North Campusers are often
guilty of the same offense, namely prizing technique over
creativity. You can easily find Chaucer-quoting English students
and musicians who practice 10 hours a day without ever wondering
about the different viewpoints and interpretations they could
possibly use to enhance their work.
Having grand art and science is great, but the perfection of
technique should aid expression, not hijack it. Ugliness and
imperfection in art is powerful. We need Ringo Starr singing out of
tune in “With a Little Help From My Friends” to express
the beauty of ordinary, unpretentious friendship. In the new
“Harry Potter” film, we need Ron’s elegantly
soaring owl to slam mistakenly into a window as if to mock the
overly perfect computer-graphics. It’s the imperfections,
what Ray Bradbury calls “texture,” that make grandness
possible.
You South Campus people don’t have to take my word for it.
When looking for inspiration in deciphering the structure of DNA,
James Watson would watch movies. According to Watson’s memoir
“The Double Helix,” a week before discovering the
double helix along with Francis Crick, he went to a screening of
the semi-porn movie, “Ecstasy” featuring Hedy Lamarr.
To get the film out of his head, Watson made doodlings that led to
his Nobel Prize-winning discovery.
Recently, Harvard Medical School professor Donald Ingber wrote
in Esquire that he had a revelation ““ cells are flexible yet
strong based on an artistic principle called
“tensegrity,” where tension is necessary for structural
stability. Ingber thought of applying it to biology not in his lab,
but during an art class studying the tensegrity sculptures of
Kenneth Snelson. Yes, science need not be created in an impersonal
reclusive fashion.
I like my cousin, but she’s stuck herself into a one-track
mindset that doesn’t allow any mockery of her own
pretensions. Unfortunately for her, the MCAT wants students to have
a wide range of understanding. I should tell her all
open-mindedness requires is cleaning out the ear wax once in a
while and hearing things out of tune.