The art of living by science

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, memoirs, family, essays

A science writer presents science done by others to a curious audience. What does one do when science impinges upon one's own life, not as research projects but as the contingencies of living that must at least be managed, if not solved in a mathematical sense? The ten extended essays/mini-memoirs in Transient and Strange: Notes on the Science of Life chronicle sundry journeys through life as encountered by Nell Greenfieldboyce. The book's title is taken from Walt Whitman's poem "Year of Meteors".

Her older child, a boy, has become terrified of tornadoes, or rather, of the concept of tornadoes. In spite of his mother's protestation that she's never even seen a tornado, he engages in obsessive fantasies about them. The younger child, a girl, is more matter-of-fact, and seems to shrug off the anxiety. What is a mother to do? One could say, "She started it," having let the children listen to an audio book about the subject, and some days later, almost on autopilot, they all watched a National Geographic short video, Tornadoes 101. What ensued is about what one would expect. Now what is a mother to do? She did what mothers generally do: Wait it out. Time brings perspective. One might argue that premature knowledge is to blame, but fortunately, youngsters are amazingly resilient.

The author is a science writer, after all. She brings science to the world around, so her children have encountered scientific subjects in abundance. That's just what she does. The tornado is a symbol (the chapter title is "The symbol of a tornado"). It represents all the big and scary and dangerous and seemingly dangerous things "out there in the world," and a mother can't protect her child from them all. The best she can do, she concludes, is to promise to "make everything better" to the best of her ability. To preschoolers, Mom's ability is akin to infinite, so a mother's promise is their bedrock.

Not all of the essays are about her children. Some are about her childhood and how she weathered the storms. One chapter ("Everybody does it!") is about doodling. What does it reveal about the ways our mind works? Does the way we doodle (and we all do!) square with certain aspects of our character? Digging into the subject, looking at samples of doodles of the celebrated, she finds that her style of doodling is a lot like that of President Washington, and another President with a similar style was U.S. Grant. Does that mean she has an aptitude for leadership or national administration? Or does it simply imply that the kind of orderliness Washington needed for his career is related to what she needs for hers? Maybe it is coincidence; there may be many styles of scribbling, but perhaps not billions thereof.

Her last chapter, "My eugenics project" practically drags us through her own sturm und drang while coping with the chance that children she has by her husband will be afflicted with a serious genetic kidney ailment. Her terror mirrors that of her son at the thought of tornadoes. But she came to a place of peace, just as, years later, her children did also.

She writes with heart and grace, confiding in us in ways few can accomplish. As with the best writing in general, this little book motivates a reader to look within, to learn about oneself and how one copes with tragedy or the dread of possible tragedy.

Looking for a way to illustrate this post I spent half an hour throwing the prompt "Year of comets and meteors transient and strange", a longer quote from Whitman's poem, at several generative art apps. This one by Gemini is similar to the graphic on the cover of the book, but I obtained ten quite diverse images, grouped in the closing panel below.