In retrospect , I am glad to be part of the Earth, Life and Time program, and to have gained a comprehensive understanding of the « Nature of Science and Science of Nature ». The fact that E,L&T is not just a class but a colloquium open to discussion and a living-learning program, enhanced the overall experience, so it was not just a weekly dry input of information but a lesson for life.
While science can be studied in many different ways and from different points of view, we have concentrated on how we can look at science when we consider time. The science courses, some of them being supporting courses for E,L&T, I have taken introduce the aspect of time mainly as an independent variable or dependent variable in studies or calculations. E,L&T like no other science course covered the science of many different topics ranging from genetics, to geology, to the study of language and therefore helped to show how time is essential for understanding our world and ourselves, and is so much more than a label for a x-axis.
The second half of the first semester of E,L&T focused on the science of the earth including questions pertaining to geology like what fossils millions of years old can tell us about the past and why the earth looks the way it does and how it continues to undergo morphological changes. To grasp these concepts we had to learn the meaning of geological time, which is out of the grasps of human perception but yet necessary to consider the science of geology. This became clear to me on the field trip to Brownie Beach and Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary I went to this semester as a Sophomore. While walking through the wetland forest in Jug Bay with a group of students, Dr. Holtz directed our attentions to a stream system. We could see how it was surrounded by hangovers and valleys. Dr. Holtz explained how over millions of years the stream system formed these structures by picking up soil and other materials and depositing it at a different site. Looking at the stream system, which at that time was about a meter wide, it is not intuitive to imagine it having the power of erosion and forming the hangover we just climbed down. Looking at this scenario, it becomes clear that without the reflection on “deep time” the scientific study and understanding of the earth which is about 4.5 billions years old becomes quite hard.
Another scientific area of study that can only be understood when taking into account time is genetics and evolution. This is the topic that we discussed in the first half of the second semester of E,L&T. This semester included some interesting lectures about evolution in general and how we humans evolved from a single cell. In the BSCI222 Principles of Genetics course I took, I learned in great details about the cellular underlining of heredity and the mechanism of evolution like mutations and genetic drift. E,L&T did not teach us in such detail about these concepts (for one because it is not a genetics class), but instead gave a more comprehensive view of evolution and genetics including the life and doings of Darwin, the biodiversity resulting from evolution (obviously) and the history of the human race. We then went further to see what exactly “race” means. My favorite project of all three semesters, the Family History Project, nicely illustrated how our past can teach us about race. When one solely considers the present and looks around at other people, one can observe people physically and behaviorally different, standards that in our society group people into one “race” or another. However when one looks at the history of the human race over the last two centuries like we did in the project, one can see how the populations on earth get constantly mixed and how many people have ancestors from a wide variety of regions of the earth. So, one could argue for one single human race, who just adapted different looks and behaviors according to their geographical location. This is how I personally viewed the human population. However, the lecture “Human Biological Diversity and ‘Race’” which involved us looking at pictures of people from all over the world and trying to find out what “race” they belong to, introduced a new way to look at the issue of race. It turned out to be impossible to correctly sort the people on the pictures to one of the “typical races”. This is because there exists a spectrum of races with no finite boundaries. I cannot remember an instance where a concept introduced in E,L&T contradicted what I previously thought to be true, however there where many instances like the one just described where I was challenged to critically question and reflect on my ideas. In most of the cases it has resulted to a broader understanding of the issue at hand.
In general, one of the things that I liked a lot about E,L&T is that it gave a broad picture of subjects that I would have otherwise only experienced with a more narrow, focused mind in my regular UMD courses. Another example of this besides the genetics course I took is the “Art and Archaeology of Africa” course I took. In this course, we mainly discussed at great details the cultures of a specific continent at a specific time period, namely the last two centuries. This permitted a deep understanding of certain African cultures in the present and early past, however the holistic approach of E,L&T to study cultures by looking at language for example, allowed for a more scientific approach and broader point of view. This again was only possible by considering time by looking long into the past and how things evolved with time.
Besides listening to lectures by Dr. Merck and Dr Holtz, a big part of E,L&T was the participation and living together of us students. While I personally was not a real active part of class discussions, I mainly contributed by bringing in my own unique experiences and ideas by actively participating in group projects and completing assignments and field trips activities. For example, by doing the Family Project, my family history as part of the overall history of every student in class, helped us to identify how our ancestors are interconnected with each other. Interacting with fellow students during groups projects like the End of the World project of this semester was another way through which I added to the overall E,L&T experience. A group project like that where there are no right or wrong answers especially thrives on the input of each student. I found these open-ended questions of group discussion that I encountered through my three semesters to be the main source of benefiting from academically interacting with other students. The ideas of others not only make you contemplate your own, but can also teach you. While interacting in class with other students helped me to study the topics of E,L&T, living together with E,L&T students did not particularly do so. However, it created a nice atmosphere of students with similar interests living together and helped me find friends dear to me.
While living with students with shared interests but yet different opinions teaches you lessons outside of the classroom, the lessons learned in class that I believe will be the most use in future are logical fallacies and Carl Sagan’s Tool kit. The latter basically describes how scientists think. Too often in my personal and academic life, I encounter people with whom it is impossible to have an argument of listen to because they become unreasonable as they follow the logical fallacies. Knowing Carl Sagan’s Tool kit and knowing what the different logical fallacies are, will help me to better detect unreasonable people and dispute them. It will also help me for the rest of my schooling and throughout my professional career to protect myself from pseudoscience and logical fallacies I may encounter in my courses or in the media. Another lesson I believe will be of use in the future is how to write a HTML code for a webpage. The internet is a powerful type of media and knowing how to create part of it can only be beneficial.
In conclusion, the broad approach of E,L&T on studying the sciences of the physical and living world was an excellent supplement to the other more specific and focused courses I took, besides being an interesting course for itself. A broad and true understanding of science is imspossible without considering time as the age of the earth or human species or looking at how language evolved over time for example. This became clear when listening to the lectures, working on take-home or groups projects among other things.
Since long time ago, I found my passion for some of the basic principles of science like biology and chemistry, and I decided that I would follow an occupation pertaining to science. Thanks to E,L&T, I was confirmed that my decision was the right one and have gained an appreciation of the world of science I could have hardly received in a typical science class offered at UMD.