Transcriber: Khanh Nguyen Reviewer: David DeRuwe
When I was in my third year of mechanical engineering,
I was looking for a work position for my co-op term,
and I came across a job posting from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter,
and it was something along the lines of they were looking for someone
to help with their animatronic werewolves.
I did not get the job; I did not end up working werewolves,
but it really drew my attention to the incredibly unusual projects
that can exist at this bridging point between engineering and the arts.
And I realized that the work I was most excited about
were these strange, discipline-hopping projects
that combine engineering and science with literature and music and film.
And what I want to talk about today are really exciting research opportunities
that currently exist, that merge research and STEM and the humanities,
and especially that combine science and literature.
You know, I think with the modern university setup,
it’s quite easy to let ourselves get channeled down
into a very specific focus,
but the reality is
that we need people who have a diverse range of training and skills,
we need scientists who are also writers and artists and musicians,
and we need artists who are also scientists.
And this is useful for designing theme parks,
but we really, really need it for talking about climate science
and thinking about how we communicate climate science.
So I initially did engineering here at Dalhousie.
Like a lot of people, I had a really hard time, I think,
picking what I wanted to do for my major.
I loved math and science;
I also really loved writing and music and theater.
And I mean, I was very happy in engineering.
I did co-op,
which meant that I got to sample a number of work and research positions,
and I did end up doing quite a bit of climate research,
so I worked in a number of climate labs.
And at the end I realized that what I really wanted to do
was think about how that work in the lab was distributed to the public,
how to be right about it.
How do people - what’s the history of how people have written about science?
So after my engineering degree,
I was very fortunate to get a Rhodes Scholarship
to study at the University of Oxford,
and this was - the Rhodes is amazing
because, particularly because it gives you the freedom
to pursue whatever course of study you choose.
So instead of doing graduate studies,
I decided to do another undergraduate degree,
this time in English literature.
This was one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made,
I was able to return to a lot of these historical scientific texts
and mathematical texts I encountered in engineering,
but this time from a completely different perspective,
and I was also able to take techniques and skills from engineering and math
and apply them to literary texts.
So one of my favorite projects that I worked on
was a coding analysis of Shakespeare.
So I was really interested in how current performers were dealing
with rhythmically complicated bits of Shakespeare.
How were these rhythms in Shakespeare actually being heard on the modern stage?
So I took audio from a whole bunch of different performances,
and I had code and programs that would break down
how long the actors spent on each syllable.
And you could get plots to visualize the rhythm
and metrics and stats to analyze what choices were being made
or the effect that this was having.
And I mean, I had a lot of fun; it was really exciting.
And this is really only a small window
into the kind of digital humanities research that’s currently happening.
This is a really exciting research area,
and I mean, probably the most famous example
of this kind of research is authorship debates.
There is - you can,
with statistical analysis and computer analysis,
researchers are analyzing the grammar and the syntax
and the word usage of texts
to help settle debates over who wrote what.
So the Oxford Shakespeare editions recently changed their attribution
to Shakespeare’s “Henry VI” plays to be a collaboration
between Shakespeare and the playwright Christopher Marlowe.
This is really fascinating research,
and I like to think of this kind of work as science being applied to literature,
so the techniques of science and math being turned on these literary texts.
And for this type of research to work,
you really need people who have a diverse range of training.
You need literary scholars
who have a strong background in stats and in math,
and you need mathematicians
who are interested in work in literary texts
and who are interested in collaborating.
I know for me it was really exciting to take code and techniques
that I previously used for phytoplankton modeling
and greenhouse gas detection
and apply them to Shakespeare; it’s just a lot of fun.
So that’s sort of science on literature.
But the opposite relationship also works,
which is taking techniques of literary analysis
and turning them back on science and scientific texts.
And this can raise so many interesting questions
because we’re looking at these historical texts,
which are, you know, 200-, 300- or far older-years old,
and they are now texts that form the foundation
for a lot of modern science.
And so we can think about how are these texts working?
Who is their audience? How are they communicating?
What they’re trying to communicate.
These historical scientists and natural philosophers
were often speaking to a much broader public.
They were speaking to people who maybe hadn’t seen
what the scientists themselves had seen under a telescope
or through a telescope or a microscope,
and they were often trying to make a case for their value of the work.
You know, you have Robert Hooke,
who is looking through his microscope and he’s writing about it,
and he’s trying to convince people that it’s even worth the time
and the energy to look at things under a microscope.
In my degree, I looked at the work of William Herschel,
who was an astronomer,
who’s now best known as the person who discovered the planet Uranus.
But he has whole portions of his texts -
again, he’s talking to an audience
who largely hasn’t seen what he’s seen through his telescope.
And he has a portion in one of his texts where he just describes
leading the reader up stairs into the stars,
and the stars are written about as coming towards the reader as you get closer.
And it’s an incredible piece of writing.
And really, Herschel and these other scientists are using
incredibly rich literary illusions and metaphors and references
to try to communicate their work,
and this is really the realm for literary scholars to look at.
There’s so much value that can be gained from thinking
about how could these texts work, how has science been communicated
and how is it being communicated now?
So that’s sort of literary techniques on science,
and that brings me to my final point,
which is the importance of these interdisciplinary studies
and people with a broad range of techniques and interests,
especially when it comes to talking about climate science.
So I mean, of course, we’re at a point now
where we have so much research coming out and so much coming out of the lab
and such a difficulty in getting it to reach people and connect with people.
There’s a lot of climate apathy.
I think we all know
the feeling of you see the article pop up and you know it’s important
and you just don’t want to deal with it right now.
So how do we get people interested and get people engaged
and trust in what’s coming up in the lab?
And, you know, this is a problem that’s not just with scientists;
this is a problem that’s also for the artists
and for people who do both.
So my current research - I’m currently doing a masters in the history of science,
and I’m looking at how people in the early 19th century
brought about changes to their climate.
And this is really interesting period, because, for example, in 1816,
there was a year that became known as “The Year Without A Summer.”
So there was across North America and Europe, there was terrible weather,
it was cold, it was dark and rainy,
there were crop failures and food shortages,
there was talk of apocalypse,
and poet Byron wrote a poem
about the sun going cold and the Earth going dark.
So I’m really interested in how are people writing about this period?
We now know that these effects
were caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia,
but at the time, people didn’t know it was causing it.
I’m interested in what forms of writing emerged of this kind of event,
how were poets and early meteorologists and scientists
writing about it and describing it?
And who was the public looking to for explanations?
And I think there’s so much that we can learn
about the relationship between literature and science and climate at the time,
and also for our current situation.
So I mean, there are many other projects that are merging
at this kind of intersection point.
We have environmental humanities networks
which are getting a bunch of disciplines together
to talk about issues like this.
We have environmental history.
There are all kinds of projects that you really wouldn’t expect
that are bridging these fields
and bridging the gap between the arts and the sciences.
And for this to work, you really need scientists
who are engaged and interested in such things broadly beyond their field,
and you need artists and humanities scholars
who are equally engaged in the sciences.
And I think there are so many other research areas
which don’t exist yet but definitely could and should
that utilize these disciplinary connections.
So in conclusion, I guess I just want to say,
if you are a science student, if you’re in engineering,
take that humanities elective.
Don’t take it just because you have to,
take one that you’re really excited about and interested in.
Read widely.
If you are a writer, if you play an instrument,
keep those things up.
You never know what kind of really exciting research project
that might lead to down the road,
and you know, even if you don’t end up designing animatronic movie puppets,
it’ll make you a better and more well-rounded scientist engineer.
And if you’re a humanities student,
the humanities are not soft or less cutting edge; they’re essential.
They're how we communicate and relate to each other
and hold each other accountable.
And I guess I would say, you know, go to that,
take that weird science elective, go to the lecture on Newton,
read up on the sciences that you’re interested in
and stay up to date.
You never know,
maybe it’ll inspire a great piece of science fiction
or you never know, the next great climate novel.
And we need it.
Thank you.