I always thought of language arts, biology, and history as green subjects. Math and physics are the ghastly pinky-beige that was so popular in early 1960s living room paint. Chemistry is a nice rich brown. Economics and typing are a dreadful dirty beige.
I was just having a bit of fun, there was no deep analysis involved. Just a fun little exercise - "What's the first colour that comes to mind with this word?" I'll try to be more positive.
I have synesthesia. It's a broad spectrum of perception that goes beyond smelling color or seeing numbers in color. I perceive the year as having a physical location and I see it spreading out beyond my current position in the system. Right now, December is to my right and slightly behind me. April is to my left and ahead of me. September is in front of me and to the right. If I turn around 180 degrees, April will be to my right and behind me. I perceive noise as a physical sensation. I had a dance student who perceived music as color and who choreographed her dances accordingly. I suspect synesthesia is more common than we think, but people assume their perceptions are shared by the general population so never think to mention them. I was stunned to discover most people don't feel noise. I think I was around 35 or 40 when I realized it.
Well now I feel like an ass. Carry on, carry on. Nothing to see here. Besides it's your right to be as negative as you want if you feel that way.
The healthy mindset I guess lies somewhere in the middle. Extreme optimism may lead to toxic positivity, and extreme pessimism may lead to toxic negativity. Balance in all things. - I guess being a realist?
hmm… until college i couldn’t easily remember the order of the spring months because it was laid out like a candy land board, and it was like I was standing on September. Winter had a hump that it was difficult for me to see over so I always had to count out March and April on my fingers. I’ve basically got the gist of it now thankfully.
i might be that that march and april are like void months; i can hardly remember anything that’s ever happened to me in them until recently. Just a long stretch of amnesiac rain and wind and melting snow and the dreariest part of the year.
Homosexual behavior is natural and common in the animal kingdom. Humpback sex photographed for first time – and both whales were male Scientists confirm sighting of two same-sex marine giants copulating in amorous encounter off Hawaii coast
Yeah, I knew it was hunting - but that's not so funny. Actually, Gray Whales are not extinct...check it out...
They are still found in the north Pacific! Hunting brought them to near extinction. From the 1930s, conservation measures were enacted, and so they are still around today. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/gray-whale
"I think the role of the novel has changed a little bit. In the nineteenth century, the novel was where you went to get your serious reflections and questionings about life. You'd go to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Nowadays, of course, you know the scientists actually tell much more about such issues than you would ever get from novelists. So I think that for the real solid red meat of what I read I go to science books, and read some novels for light relief." ~ Douglas Adams, quoted in Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science, by Richard Dawkins Is it true? Have science books replaced novels as our source of depth?
Full disclosure: I am scientist, science writer, and novelist. The term "science books" covers a pretty wide swath, from illustrated popular science for dummies to turgid tomes of graphs and complicated statistical programs. Some are excellent and thought-provoking. Others are eye-rolling nonsense. "Novels" cover a similarly wide stretch of ground. Some are excellent and thought-provoking. Others are eye-rolling nonsense. In making that statement, I suspect Adams was trying to impress his audience with "hey, I'm smart; I read the hard stuff," and diss his fellow novelists at the same time. The guy had no scientific training and I question his ability to tell "the real solid red meat" of science from well-written bullshit. In the search for "serious reflections and questionings about life," to reject novels in favor of science writing and vice versa is to unnecessarily limit one's horizons.
All I know is that non-replicated social experiments with small sample sizes and dubious controls/methods are plenty enough to guide my understanding of the human condition.
this might shock you all, but it’s possible that douglas adams was not being completely serious i glean great ethical strength from the pages of the American Psychologist
I'd say that science gives us facts and data (which are indispensible and absolutley necessary) while novels at their best give us profound human truths.
Hard to know without reading the statement in context with the entire interview. Versions of this sentiment have been expressed by others, though, so it's not a stretch to think Adams might've meant exactly what he said. Can't ask him. He's been dead for over twenty years. I'd forgive the man just about anything for his reading of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.
I think you are missing the transitional period between the two. Where you had actual scientists writing for the pulp market. E.E."Doc" Smith, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and other respected scientists attempting to use the science of the day in their fiction.
Crossover between science and fiction didn't start with these guys. Fādil ibn Nātiq by Ibn al Nafis is the example I recall from the enthusiastic lecturing of a long-ago sci fi nerd/college professor. Ibn al Nafis was the first guy to describe the pulmonary circulation of blood, and mentions the same in this novel. He incorporated plenty of other science into his fiction as well. He lived between 1213 and 1288 CE (had to run look that up) so is a wee bit earlier than Asimov et al.
