Oohs and Aahs

I suffer from an ugly prejudice.

Only scientific disciplines derived from physics or chemistry are important to me.  Anything related to biology is rigorously ignored.  I admit it’s rather shameful to neglect a subject I dropped as soon as I could.  It must have been the squishy eyeball, dissected at age 14, that put me off.

Fortunately, not all women are as squeamish as I.  There are those that are thrilled to investigate the nature of life.  It is a remarkably challenging intellectual pursuit; some of us have trouble understanding our own species, never mind understanding how all those other species fit into the big scheme of things.

As you can imagine, it’s rare for me to envy a maven of the biological sciences.  She can keep her squishy eyeballs. However, for a fleeting moment, I coveted the life of a marine biologist.

Early this month, my family boarded a whale-watching cruise in Monterey Bay, CA, along with a variety of humans with a variety of nationalities.  Those of us who were tourists were delighted when a pair of humpback whales gently nudged and meticulously inspected our boat.  (They found it seaworthy.)  The whales were charming, inquisitive, and persistent – proving that curiosity is not solely a human trait.  However, the passengers’ excitement could not be compared to that of the crew.  They – including the marine biologist – were ecstatic.  The gushing scientist on board, and her colleagues, were irrepressible.

What an excellent reminder of why we study science.  Whether through equations or ecology, we seek the truth of the world we live in.  Sadly, we sometimes forget that we pursue science because of  the joy of curiosity and the inherent thrill in discovery.  We are jaded by years of professional this or professional that, and the need to conform to a norm that was never ours.  But underneath it all, we are still little girls oohing and aahing at what is truly interesting.

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