I have two books I like to leaf through from time to time: Michurin’s “Conclusions from 60 years of work” (in Ukrainian; original text from 1935) and Lichtenshtein’s “Editing a book on science” (in Russian; from 1957). Also, a Russian translation of Kepler’s ‘On Six-cornered snowflake’ and other essays.
They aren’t very old, but they are dated. There’s a lot of ideology in Lichtenshtein—he quotes Lenin and Co about once a page, and I’m glad he does, because it both annoys me and works. They are comparatively narrow in scope; I likely won’t have to use them in practice. I haven’t ever read them from cover to cover. But I keep them, because...
They teach you to slow down. The new books tell you what to do and how to do it, yes. However, when you have bought labware, haunted your statistician into celibacy, grown your flies and are ready to sit down and count them—you have to slow down. There are small observations that never make it into articles, cryptic little notes in your journal like ‘slide 740 is too dark, but better contrasted than 741 - overheated?’ - the kind that makes up a large chunk of the ‘intangible knowledge’ in your field. Old books might have such asides (sometimes written in the margins by a reader before you), and emphasize the importance of not relying on memory.
They teach you that science is actually possible—in an inexpensive, tried, and criticable way. ‘Suppose all your knowledge about a certain domain was deleted, how could you re-invent it...’ is all good and well, but there’s no way you can just re-invent methabolic pathways from scratch within a currently available lifetime—and no way at all if your brain hasn’t been trained to notice things. I know a guy in our Ecology Department who is a great naturalist. One of them who will just as carefully weigh baby seals, measure stamens and collect rocks. That’s what you want in people whom you send to Mars (or to Antarctica, in his case) - not merely skill or dedication or high IQ, because it all isn’t worth shit if they bring you a damaged sample. He observes things… but for most people, he wouldn’t be the best instructor. He rambles, and if you aren’t in love with zoology, you won’t stay long enough for him to finish. (Also, he’s getting on in years and has a heart problem, and so doesn’t get out into the field often anyways.) Books are more bearable—and there’s more of them. (I think this point has been raised elsewhere on LW.)
They teach you about good illustration. Very often I see, in presentations, mags and even books, colourful photoes of plants—frequently, the flower; but as a botanist, I know I’ve also got to recognize the species out of bloom! I need to see the whole! Another problem I’ve run into when interested in someone’s experimental setup is too dark images in scanned articles (and useless angles of view, for example if the author had wished to show a rack of test tubes instead of one single fitting.) The old pictures are representative.
They teach you about different, perhaps no less efficient ways of presenting data, too. Not just the sad tombstones with error bars hung upon their tops. Lichtenstein’s section on tables is beautiful. He discusses the lengths to which a decent editor can and cannot go when preparing the manuscript for print. He showed me more about writing up the data than anybody in the grad school ever could.
They teach you to be picky. You can’t, on your lonesome, much improve the quality of contemporary research in any given area—you’re stuck not only with the ‘current ways of being wrong’ that the Lewis quote has addressed, but also with ‘current standards of being right enough’ - EY talked about it in the beisutsukai sequence. When I read Michurin, though, I have this chill between my shoulderblades, the feeling that he’d held himself to a much higher standard than I do, even if he happened to be wrong.
They teach you to look outside of your own field and to speak simply. Kepler engages the reader, lightheartedly and gently. Reading him actually made the world seem less cruel, more playful.
I have two books I like to leaf through from time to time: Michurin’s “Conclusions from 60 years of work” (in Ukrainian; original text from 1935) and Lichtenshtein’s “Editing a book on science” (in Russian; from 1957). Also, a Russian translation of Kepler’s ‘On Six-cornered snowflake’ and other essays.
They aren’t very old, but they are dated. There’s a lot of ideology in Lichtenshtein—he quotes Lenin and Co about once a page, and I’m glad he does, because it both annoys me and works. They are comparatively narrow in scope; I likely won’t have to use them in practice. I haven’t ever read them from cover to cover. But I keep them, because...
They teach you to slow down. The new books tell you what to do and how to do it, yes. However, when you have bought labware, haunted your statistician into celibacy, grown your flies and are ready to sit down and count them—you have to slow down. There are small observations that never make it into articles, cryptic little notes in your journal like ‘slide 740 is too dark, but better contrasted than 741 - overheated?’ - the kind that makes up a large chunk of the ‘intangible knowledge’ in your field. Old books might have such asides (sometimes written in the margins by a reader before you), and emphasize the importance of not relying on memory.
They teach you that science is actually possible—in an inexpensive, tried, and criticable way. ‘Suppose all your knowledge about a certain domain was deleted, how could you re-invent it...’ is all good and well, but there’s no way you can just re-invent methabolic pathways from scratch within a currently available lifetime—and no way at all if your brain hasn’t been trained to notice things. I know a guy in our Ecology Department who is a great naturalist. One of them who will just as carefully weigh baby seals, measure stamens and collect rocks. That’s what you want in people whom you send to Mars (or to Antarctica, in his case) - not merely skill or dedication or high IQ, because it all isn’t worth shit if they bring you a damaged sample. He observes things… but for most people, he wouldn’t be the best instructor. He rambles, and if you aren’t in love with zoology, you won’t stay long enough for him to finish. (Also, he’s getting on in years and has a heart problem, and so doesn’t get out into the field often anyways.) Books are more bearable—and there’s more of them. (I think this point has been raised elsewhere on LW.)
They teach you about good illustration. Very often I see, in presentations, mags and even books, colourful photoes of plants—frequently, the flower; but as a botanist, I know I’ve also got to recognize the species out of bloom! I need to see the whole! Another problem I’ve run into when interested in someone’s experimental setup is too dark images in scanned articles (and useless angles of view, for example if the author had wished to show a rack of test tubes instead of one single fitting.) The old pictures are representative.
They teach you about different, perhaps no less efficient ways of presenting data, too. Not just the sad tombstones with error bars hung upon their tops. Lichtenstein’s section on tables is beautiful. He discusses the lengths to which a decent editor can and cannot go when preparing the manuscript for print. He showed me more about writing up the data than anybody in the grad school ever could.
They teach you to be picky. You can’t, on your lonesome, much improve the quality of contemporary research in any given area—you’re stuck not only with the ‘current ways of being wrong’ that the Lewis quote has addressed, but also with ‘current standards of being right enough’ - EY talked about it in the beisutsukai sequence. When I read Michurin, though, I have this chill between my shoulderblades, the feeling that he’d held himself to a much higher standard than I do, even if he happened to be wrong.
They teach you to look outside of your own field and to speak simply. Kepler engages the reader, lightheartedly and gently. Reading him actually made the world seem less cruel, more playful.