'It is my experience that great mind and great heart go together. This Scientific Magnanimity will motivate the scientific community'

Gentlemen of Science | Hanya, Atwood & Kalam

Hanya Yanagihara’s debut novel titled, The People in the Trees, which I chanced upon at Starmark, Chennai, has been sleeping for long on my bookstacks, unattended! Now, when I was working on Italo Calvino’s Baron in the Trees, in a trice I was quite reminded of Hanya’s The People in the Trees, written almost 56 years after Calvino’s Cosimo came to have a permanent literary existence and a literary abode in our little hearts!

Well, for the 1970’s born mighty ones out there, Hanya herself is a 70’s kid! Ketto! ;-)

Hanya Yanagihara, ‘a writer to marvel at’, is a popular travel writer, novelist and editor! This, her People in the Trees is then, her debut novel.

The novel contains for the most part the fictional memoirs of Dr. Norton Perina, in such a beautiful narrative style.

Norton Perina, tells us through this, his fictional memoir that his great fascination and curiosity for science was aroused by his paternal aunt, Ms Sybil, a doctor herself!

While Norton Perina is in medical school, he gets an offer to be the medical doctor on board an anthropological team that was to go on an expedition to an island by name, U’ivu. This anthropological team is led by a person called Paul Tallent. Although the expedition is considered a dangerous mission, Dr. Norton Perina accepts the offer to be part of the team.

Under the leadership of Tallet, Norton Perina reaches the great island of Ivu’ivu. [Oh please, for heaven’s sake, forget Ghosh and his Gun Island, for now! will you? ;-)] From there they enter a still smaller island by name Ivu’ivu. [Hanya’s Hawaii connect could be gauged here, ain’t it? Well, she grew up in Hawaii!] Once they are led inside the deep recesses of the island, into the jungle, with the help of three hunters who double up as guides, Tallent tells Norton about the famous legend of the U’ivu people. 

The legend goes that, there was a lost tribe amongst them who had been gifted with eternal life along with deep stupidity on them. Quite soon they spot a woman, who is totally naked and not able to perform her functions as a regular human being. They call her ‘Eve’ and soon discover a horde of a similar tribes folk whom they call, ‘Dreamers’. One curious case about them all is that, all of them, tribesfolk sported the mark of a turtle on them all, which was an indicator that they had turned 60, although all of them were in reality, more than 100 years of age!

They notice then, the chief of the village celebrating a ritual. And in this particular ritual, he is seen celebrating his 60^th birthday, during which time, he eats up a turtle. Norton Perina’s intuition starts working overtime by now. He quickly starts connecting on the dots, adds up two and two, and surmises a curious connect of sorts between the eating up of the turtle and the ‘eternal life’ of the tribes folk!

Well, that, then, happened to be his ‘Eureka’ moment of sorts, and meant to be a teaser to the story! Nothing more! 

Coming back to what’s at stake on this post for us all! Norton Perina’s take on his lab routine has some points worth a ponder for this, our post!

That takes us to the part in the storyline, where Norton Perina describes his tryst with the lab in which he works, and his drudge of a routine!

Well, on this part in especial, one particularly weirdy sentence attracted my attention! And hence this post! ;-) I began focusing on it over and over, highlighted it with my yellow highlighter, and pored over its import again and again and again!

And that’s the part, reproduced below, where he says that, ‘In those days science considered itself the realm of gentlemen’.

In a nutshell, Dr. Norton Perina observes here that, people of science in those good ol’ days were people of genius! And being a man of genius back then did not mean they should lack social skills, and be unfriendly with the lay! Men of genius back then, had amazing skills and were very cordial and amiable with the lay, he observes! Then he contrasts this quality of a ‘gentleman’ with the present day ‘gentlemen’ of science, who according to him, present a social ineptitude, and a certain refusal to acquire the most basic social skills, along with an inability to dress properly or to feed oneself! The ‘gentlemen’ of science of today’s ‘strongly’ feel that, ‘lacking’ social skills, and dressing up like a ‘nerd’, and being callous, slatternly and slovenly in their habits, is the chief ‘evidence’ of one’s intellectual purity and ‘commitment’ to the life of the mind!

I quote Norton Perina –

But what does it mean to be successful or talented in a lab? For your work there is not truly your own; you are chosen because of your mind and then asked, to varying degrees, to cease thinking for yourself and begin doing so for another. For some people this is easier than for others; they are the ones who remain. And so although you gain fraternity, you forsake your independence.

They are all of them patient, though; I, however, knew by the end of my first term with Smythe’s lab that I could never be that patient, nor that pliable.

Part of this certainty was attributable to the discomfort I felt with the culture of the lab itself. there was at work a kind of conservatism, a fixation on neatness, that I found difficult and dispiriting. In those days science considered itself the realm of gentlemen. This was the era, after all, of Linus Pauling and J. Robert Oppenheimer, both of them exceptional, of course, but not exempt from having to dress a certain way, or from being able to perform at cocktail parties, or from pursuing romance. Genius was no excuse for social ineptitude, the way it is today, when a certain refusal to acquire the most basic social skills or an inability to dress properly or feed oneself is generously perceived as evidence of one’s intellectual purity and commitment to the life of the mind.

Ain’t there a little connect here between the ‘Lucky Jim’ saga [in this past post,] and the ‘highbrow’ gentlemen of the University presented therein, in which a lower-middle class young man – Jim Dixon by name, becomes a professor in medieval history at the University and he finds himself surrounded by despicable ‘high brow’ colleagues from the higher echelons of society, who have such high airs on them, and whom he loathes and despises very much.

Well, Jim was averse to their ilk because of their pretensions and snobbishness and their ‘high brow’ attitude towards other faculty and students! Those snobbish pretensions only tended to show them in bad light, says the angry young man, Jim aka Jim Dixon! Hence Jim decides to be antiestablishment - loathing to the core - the precepts of ‘gentlemanliness’ practised at his place of work!

Something akin to the gentlemen of the University, we find here, practiced amongst the ‘science’ folk too! Reminds of me of my all-time favvy writer Atwood, and her take on the ‘mad-scientist’ archetype, which we’d discussed back here, in our past post. Has got some real interesting connects with this post, as well!

One reason why, Hanya rips through their snobbishness and pretensions headlong!

Now, me thought of ending this post, on a grand note, to the malady that’s been plaguing the scientific community, too! The malady and the peril of ‘snobbishness’ and ‘pretensions’ that make the scientist assume that they are UFOs with some weird horns on them, not quite fit to associate with pavapetta mortals in general and the lay in particular!

Dr. Abdul Kalam, when he was President of our Nation, visited our grand, old Madras Christian College, way back in the year 2007.

I personally feel that, his talk on ‘Scientific Magnanimity’ at MCC, on 26 February 2007, [which I had reproduced in full on our blog, back then, on this past post,] would be a fitting and dignified retort to these science ‘gentlemen’ types whom Hanya here refers to with disdain and scorn!

Well, Dr. APJ stole our hearts on that eventful day, when he spoke from three great scientist- gentlemen from India, who have set us a paradigm worth emulating!

Over to APJ Sir, from his speech to us all, at MCC –

Since I am in the midst students, I thought of sharing with you an incident about Sir CV Raman – a Nobel Laureate in Physics for discovering Raman Effect. Raman gives the view that the color of sky is blue due to molecular diffraction which determines the observed luminosity and in great measures also its color. This led to the birth of the Raman Effect.

Raman was in the first batch of Bharat Ratna Award winners. The award ceremony was to take place in the last week of January, soon after the Republic Day celebrations of 1954. The then President Dr. Rajendra Prasad wrote to Raman inviting him to be the personal guest in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, when Raman came to Delhi for the award ceremony. Sir CV Raman wrote a polite letter, regretting his inability to go.

Raman had a noble reason for his inability to attend the investiture ceremony. He explained to the President that he was guiding a Ph.D. student and that thesis was positively due by the last day of January. The student was valiantly trying to wrap it all up and Raman felt, he had to be by the side of the research student, see that the thesis was finished, sign the thesis as the guide and then have it submitted.

Here was a scientist who gave up the pomp of a glittering ceremony associated with the highest honour, because he felt that his duty required him to be by the side of the student. It is this unique trait of giving value to science that builds science.

Scientific Magnanimity:

Now, I would like to narrate an incident which took place during a function conferring Nobel Laureate Prof. Norman E Borlaug, a well known agricultural scientist and a partner in India’s first Green revolution, with Dr. M S Swaminathan Award, at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi on the 15th of March 2005.

Prof. Borlaug, at the age of 91, was in the midst of all the praise showered on him from everybody gathered there. When his turn came, he got up and highlighted India’s advancement in the agricultural science and production and said that the political visionary Shri C. Subramaniam and Dr. M S Swaminathan, pioneer in agricultural science were the prime architects of First Green Revolution in India.

Even though Prof Norman Borlaug was himself a partner in the first green revolution, he did not make a point on this. He recalled with pride, Dr. Verghese Kurien who ushered White Revolution in India.

Then the surprise came. He turned to scientists sitting in the third row, fifth row and eighth row of the audience. He identified Dr. Raja Ram, a wheat specialist, Dr S K Vasal, a maize specialist, Dr. B. R. Barwale, a seed specialist. He said, all these scientists had contributed for India’s and Asia’s agricultural science. Dr. Borlaug introduced them to the audience by asking them to stand and ensured that the audience cheered and greeted the scientists with great enthusiasm.

This action of Dr. Norman Borlaug, I call it as “Scientific Magnanimity”.

Friends, if we aspire to achieve great things in life, we need Scientific Magnanimity to focus on the young achievers.

It is my experience that great mind and great heart go together. This Scientific Magnanimity will motivate the scientific community and nurture team spirit.

With this background of unique traits of great minds, dear young friends, now it is time for all of you to have a great dream in life, dream transforms into thoughts and thoughts result into action. Now I would like to administer an oath on courage:

COURAGE

Courage to think different,

Courage to invent,

Courage to discover the impossible,

Courage to travel into an unexplored path,

Courage to share the knowledge

Courage to remove the pain

Courage to reach the unreached

Courage to combat the problems And Succeed,

Are the unique qualities of the youth.

As a youth of my nation, I will work and work with courage to achieve success in all my missions.

My congratulations to all the graduates who are passing out from Madras Christian College. My best wishes to all the members of Madras Christian College in their mission of providing quality education and capacity building among the youth of Chennai and the adjoining districts.

May God bless you.

Well, me thought these above lines that present the mind and the heart of one of the best visionaries that the world has ever produced thus far, - Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, - would be a befitting grand finale for our series on gentlemen and gentlewomen!

You may also want to read my little, respectful homage to this noblest gentleman that our planet has ever seen thus far, on our past post here.

So with this ablest and noblest gentleman’s words, we come to an end on this gentle series, ladies and gentlemen!

Adieu & Love,

Dr. Rufus

images: this blogger's! PS: Well, none of us, was allowed  to take into the convocation shed our cell phones, when the President was present! - a welcome move at that! and so we had to rest content with this snap taken after the sweetest President had gotten down the dais!