Dear folks,
I labor a (bloody) decent job in daylight but enjoy being a paleo-artist in moonlight, which has shown me the present unpleasant dichotomy between the Arts and Science. Wherefore, the average Darwin must forego and forget the alphabets; he must get slurry-tongued at press conferences; and his papers must look like the alchemist's mix of English words. Across the street (or the aisle under the same roof of the ivory tower), every Dickens must now detest if not demonize science; he must pretend never to have heard of Nature or Science or Cell; and his scripts must be on Middle-Earth rather than The Lost World.
I think we need not be like that. While I'm not the last man who knows everything (let Joseph Leidy of the Hadrosaurus foulkii fame claim the title) and I cannot prove, CSI style, that the current rapid specialization in science would have murdered any budding naturalist, I do recall the joy of awing under the whale skeleton hanging on that ivory tower's museum roof when I was a young kid.
And I'll bet you'd feel the same. Wouldn't you too be flocking there if you hear it has a tyrannosaur skeleton in exhibit? Well, what about a single tyrannosaur scapula that is equally spectacular to the scientist's eye?
That's the problem. When nature comes in as science nowadays, you need a lens to look through individualized disciplines and refocus on the holistic picture. Having survived the ivory tower days, I realize scientific essays and illustrations offer the best peep - as presented in this selection of examples. The info herein represents the state of knowledge current to the date of their original publication, but please remember to lean a magnifying glass upon the footnotes and commentaries. A line or two, admittedly though, is just for plain fun.
Lo! This memoir is of course not peer-reviewed - it's not even meant to be classified as science-and-tech - but come on, it doesn't take an Einstein (nor an Aesop) to see that tyrannosaurs need a pen, too!
© Leo W Sham, MMVIII
I labor a (bloody) decent job in daylight but enjoy being a paleo-artist in moonlight, which has shown me the present unpleasant dichotomy between the Arts and Science. Wherefore, the average Darwin must forego and forget the alphabets; he must get slurry-tongued at press conferences; and his papers must look like the alchemist's mix of English words. Across the street (or the aisle under the same roof of the ivory tower), every Dickens must now detest if not demonize science; he must pretend never to have heard of Nature or Science or Cell; and his scripts must be on Middle-Earth rather than The Lost World.
I think we need not be like that. While I'm not the last man who knows everything (let Joseph Leidy of the Hadrosaurus foulkii fame claim the title) and I cannot prove, CSI style, that the current rapid specialization in science would have murdered any budding naturalist, I do recall the joy of awing under the whale skeleton hanging on that ivory tower's museum roof when I was a young kid.
And I'll bet you'd feel the same. Wouldn't you too be flocking there if you hear it has a tyrannosaur skeleton in exhibit? Well, what about a single tyrannosaur scapula that is equally spectacular to the scientist's eye?
That's the problem. When nature comes in as science nowadays, you need a lens to look through individualized disciplines and refocus on the holistic picture. Having survived the ivory tower days, I realize scientific essays and illustrations offer the best peep - as presented in this selection of examples. The info herein represents the state of knowledge current to the date of their original publication, but please remember to lean a magnifying glass upon the footnotes and commentaries. A line or two, admittedly though, is just for plain fun.
Lo! This memoir is of course not peer-reviewed - it's not even meant to be classified as science-and-tech - but come on, it doesn't take an Einstein (nor an Aesop) to see that tyrannosaurs need a pen, too!
© Leo W Sham, MMVIII
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