My time at Duke, and especially my time as a research, has led to a alteration in the way I perceive definitions. I’ve been so accustomed to resorting to a Merriam Websters website or Wikipedia when ignorant of topic, idea, or object. These “topics, ideas, or objects” seemed so concrete and fixed, because this is how they were known.
Duke has challenged me by forcing me to work in the area of the flexible, malleable, and unknown. I think the days of my Ethics and in particular my Philosophy class, where we often had to define such common, seemingly simple, but ultimately complex words such as good, right, and just. We’re brought up to know what is good to do, right to say, and a just way to act. But what do those words mean?
What’s their definition?
All of a sudden, I am charged to define in my own terms. ‘Twas at that moment when I realized that almost everything at some point had to be defined and just how difficult manifesting the whole being of objects in words is. Take a second for, example. You might think of it as 1/60th of a minute or 1/3600th of a minute, or any other means of relating them to time. But how would you define a minute? Well, 60 seconds of course. But then we come across the dilemma of cyclical reasoning. So one must define the second in terms that avoid that reasoning, which gives the essence of the second; thus, we have the scientific definition of a second:
“The duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.” Thanks again Wikipedia.
Seeing as we are biologist, let’s take the definition of life: “a characteristic distinguishing physical entities having signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased (death), or because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate.”
We find that even with that definition you come across inconsistencies, viruses for example.
Now, scientists whole lives are for discovery, so they work in a perpetual state of unknown, for even what we have proven can be disproved. When it comes to defining, it is all up to the scientist to develop on his or her own based on their observations. This is thing that I, and I’m sure many people forgot all to often. Behind that dictionary and wikipedia page, is a human being tasked with having to represent a whole idea through words. This gets even harder, when we discover new information that forces us to adjust our current definitions.
So why am I saying all of this? Well, Michael brought this all to mind when discussing the findings of his lab, findings on the fringe of something somewhat new and unseen, findings that will make defining biological domains more complex. This is the case of the Archea, H. salinarum. Before, lateral gene transfer, a method of bacteria reproduction, could be used to distinguish between 2 biological domains Archea and Bacteria, as archea did not seem to have a method of sexual reproduction. However, H. salinarum, exhibits a method of lateral gene transfer, so now the scientist that live to classify and define living beings aren’t necessarily back to the drawing board, but do have work on their hands when trying to define the two distinct domains.
I guess this all goes to show that when you are working with something as complex as a whole domain of life or even something as seemingly subjective as good, right, and just, your definitions will not be as all encompassing as the scientific definitions for a second. Each new definition is just an step closer to mirroring an object rather then producing actual object and that’s good enough.
