Science

There was a time when to be a naturalist was the same thing as being a scientist. To observe the natural world in all of its complexity was to test it, to make hypotheses about it, and to search out patterns. Now "science" has become a discipline requiring knowledge of sterile techniques and statistical analyses. Naturalism has stepped down to the silver or bronze pedestal of fame.

But this shift betrays the meaning of "science," from "scientia" or "experience." Taking human experience--that which can be grasped by the five senses--and drawing conclusions from it. In this sense anyone who wonders and explores, anyone who will touch, taste, turn in the hand, or listen carefully is a scientist.

I just finished a wonderful gift from my brother: Oliver Sacks' Everything in its Place: First Loves and Last Tales. This collection of Sacks' essays, published after his 2015 death, deals with just about everything. Sacks was a physician--a neurologist who spent much time at the bedside of patients with disorders of memory or dementia--and naturalist extraordinaire. Nothing in the three-dimensional world rose above his scrutiny; nothing descended below his sense of wonder.

A work of essays like this does not submit to summing up. Sacks writes about so many different nooks and crannies of life that there is no use in doing anything but reading the whole thing. However it is worth saying in reflection that I deeply enjoyed Sacks' sense of fascination with every phenomenon. His professional passion was the human brain, of which he confessed that there was nothing more interesting or compelling in the world. But he writes with equal zeal and zest about hunting ferns in the crack of New York City concrete, about the power of gefilte fish, and about the joy of swimming. I get the impression that Sacks wandered around the world, all the time, with eyes wide open and mouth agape in enchanted wonder.

What's more, as he observes the complexities and depth of life he refrains from pronouncing meaning or judgment, avoiding all the pitfalls that come with such pronouncements. He revels in the world as it is, desiring less to know the whys and wherefores and more to know what is to be found just a little bit deeper. So, like the hand of a botanist turning over the frond of a fern thought to be extinct, Sacks' mind turns over the leaves of life gently, lovingly, so as to let life present itself.

I want to have this sense of gentle wonder, especially about people. I want to know not what "makes them tick" but what makes their hearts beat and their souls hope. I want to stroll through this grand creation and view every creature as a gift to be admired, explored, and then released to discover if it will fly.

~ emrys