Dinner on Isla Barro Colorado. Buffet style. The ability to eat as many as 5,ooo calories and or as few as 200. Anything goes. Dinner conversation on Barro Colorado. The ability to ingest 5, 000 'intellectual' calories or as few as 0. Dinner talk is cheap, but it can elevate your research to new heights, especially when the ideas you are gleaning during dinner are inspiring and beneficial. Is dinner on the island, with between 15 to 50 scientists in various career stages always like this: inspiring, deep, intellectual,…HEAVY? No way. For instance, one of the main topics of conversation (at least among the students on the island) last week was when we would have beer again on the island (we had run out three days before). Ah, beer. Nothing makes the dynamics of your research and social responsibilities more bearable than beer (thus the cause for concern at dinner for its eventual reappearance).
Contrast last week's beer chat with the one I was drawn into last night. The specter of intelligent design creationism looms on the minds of many in biology these days, and this is also true at remote places like tropical field stations in Panama. A new friend and fellow student Sonja and I began a conversation that lasted well after the end of dinner. Because we realized that significant challenges to the intergrity of American science education are being posed by those in the ID camp, we wanted to discuss further how we might play a role in combating the pseudoscientific wedges being thrown in the way of intellectual progress. Did the conversation have anything to do with my research? Not directly, though it does concern me indirectly. I can't imagine looking at the complexities of the rainforest on BCI and simply giving up the intellectual struggles to understand it by saying "it must have been designed that way". It was nice to talk to a fellow student about her opinions on the matter. It felt like, for an instant, we were drawing ourselves together and reestablishing what it is our small culture in biology believes. We believe in the scientific method and in "science as a way of knowing". We don't have all the answers and haven't explained everything yet (may it never be so!) however, we won't stop trying. We believe in the underlying unity of life on earth as explained by evolution via natural selection. It was nice to reaffirm this in a simple chat.
Am I intellectual? Sometimes. Did I participate in the 'where's the beer' chat? Of course, I started it. Man cannot live by bread alone…
