A Scientific Mind

So a previous post said something about the perfection / imperfection of science and social science. And this is quite apt, as I wonder – for the umpteenth time – if I made the wrong decision on that first day of school in 11^th standard…when I went downstairs & changed my subjects…

I guess in science, your answers would have to come from inside you; from logic and deduction and experimentation. As Carl Jung says, in these fields you have to take a leap of mind, yourself be psychotic in order to understand human psychology.

In law, and economics, all your answers come from other people – if other people, “authorities”, don’t say it, then tough luck, you can’t be the first to say it; not until you are ancient (or like a certain type of person, J noojies-only joke!). And it says something about me, if I eventually end up in the kind of crappy fields I hate the most.

Perhaps, the saving grace is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Not always. Not forever. One of the many books I was reading over the holidays was “Joseph needham and the Secrets of China”, or I think that was the name. This fellow, needham, was the classic, ideal image of the Cambridge Don, plus that dash of over-liberalism which every genius must profess…he occupied the room presently belonging to Stephen Hawking, he published huge tomes on random subjects (chemistry-related, I think), had a photographic memory, as well as a wife and a mistress (who worked together!) among others!, he played the piano perfectly, he was the heart of revivng Moorish traditional dances in UK, he wrote phamplets and what-nots to support communism…

The kind of guy, in sum, who is an irrepressible know-it-all, extroverted, exhuberent, intellectual with whom you have a serious love-hate relationship. Like Dworkin must have felt for Hart J…

And then he leaves all of this – inspired, incidentally, by his mistress – to go to China on a diplomatic mission. He comes back, to forget all his other work in the writing of 27 volumes on everything the Chinese people invented first, did right, or achieved without the West. Not that I want to do that – but inspiration can find its’ way to expression, in work, however impossible that might seem now.

Anyway, I, for one, hope so.