The spiral staircase of life

A few days ago I noticed the total absence of the Bauernbergpark man. All his belongings were gone too. Before that he had been the proud owner of a large tarpaulin that had covered all his other things. There had been carton boxes of different sizes, one of them containing tobacco packets (predominantly Maverick), lots of bottles, stones and gravel, blankets, jackets a backpack, two trolleys and a sleeping bag. Then, suddenly everything was gone. Did someone take it from him, just cleaned the park benches, took all these precious goods away. Where did he go?
Yesterday night I saw him again, sitting there, doing some weird motions with his hands. He had nothing.
Today I passed by his two favorite benches again. There was a plastic "Lidl" bag with some bottles and a blanket. So I think he is about to start all over again.
While we sit inside our warm apartments, playing Minecraft or hugging our loved ones, he starts to rebuild his mediocre empire again from nothing but a few pieces of gravel and with the help of a few nice people who obviously help him.
This gives me hope for all future catastrophes. I think we can always trust the world to get us back on our feet again. This is also one of our weaknesses, because with this hope and trust, we sometimes forget to keep on walking without any help. Maybe next time we get back on our feet without touching anything.
Maybe everything will collapse pretty soon. If so we can be sure that there will be something new, something even better and somehow worse.
That is the spiral staircase of life, the universe and everything.

Synthetic PhD

Between my walks in Bauernbergpark I travel. I was in Berlin another time.
First I met my wannabe taxi driver actor friend, who has moved from London to the German capital.
Then I attended a conference on synthetic biology, life and art at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. The most interesting aspect of it all was the Butterbrezel on the flight back.
I didn't know that you can make tiny holes into a Brezel and fill them with butter. I'll never say again that the Germans have no idea of haute cuisine.
The conference was a big success as regards applying an interdisciplinary approach. Maybe it also inspires my own work, although, so far I don't know how.
In the nighttime I read about Plato. It is entertaining but makes me wonder how he was able to influence christian philosophy to such an extent. Maybe I can read about that in a later chapter.
However, due to climate change, winter arrives late this year. That is good for the Bauernbergpark man, who can still stay outside, but bad for winter tourism.
I had another conversation with my PhD supervisor today. It ended in me having no idea what to do and us  together having birthday cake and coffee.
To sum up: My new thesis title will be "The Impact of the Butterbrezel on Synthetic Biology", nah...better "Platonic cosmology and the Bauernbergpark man". I don't know.
Maybe I start all over again, reading some Max Weber stuff instead.
Sometimes I wish I had the courage to sit next to the man in Bauernbergpark and drink a bottle of beer with him instead of wondering about my PhD work. Sometimes I wish I had followed another line of work.
Nevertheless yesterday a colleague told me: "We always want to do the opposite of what we are doing at the moment." So I am waiting for the next moment, in which I know that I do exactly the right thing. Here it is. Nice. Bye bye.

Reincarnation

 Day 17 November 28 2011

It is a short way from here to Bauernbergpark. There are about three places where the Bauernbergpark man lives. They can be found on my first map of Bauernbergpark. Place number three is the Pavilion where he rarely stays nowadays. At the moment he has his belongings on two park benches at number two.

However, I wanted to mention one of his habits, concerning the Pavilion. In winter, especially when it is dark, he walks around the central pillar of the Pavilion in a steady circle.

Today I met a mother with a child doing the same in a playful way. I thought that also future Bauernbergpark men need their training early in life. I walked away with a smile.

Darwin

Day 16 November 20 2011

After a two-day conference in Berlin on narratives in science/science as narrative I am heading back to Upper Austria. The conference staged by the German Society for the History of Science and the Society for the Study of Science and Technology was rather lively and diverse.

Sometimes it appeared to me that I knew nothing at all. At least some names seemed familiar, like Foucault and Kuhn. Finally people talked about Charles Darwin and gave me ideas that I should have had before my diploma thesis.

Some of the presentations at the conference were purely philosophical, like the one about Blumenberg and the one about aesthetics in science. The more empirical ones were more likely to be criticized, questioning the applicability of narration analysis for the diverse fields of research, from sociology to geography, from history to science and technology studies (STS – not to be confused with Steinbecker- Timischl- Schiffkowitz).

The highlights for me, apart from some of the talks, were conversations with V. about narratives in nanotechnology and with H. about science communication and the relation between science and humanities in interdisciplinary projects. I hope that they are not angry with me because I mention their names in such a blog, just a few lines away from the Bauernbergpark man.

Now I return to lots of work, to a meeting of minds with my PhD supervisor and to my familiar environment.

Berlin, by the way is worth a trip. Therefore I will return here.

Thales

Day 15 November 15 2011

Thales

Bertrand Russel made fun of the fact that Thales of Miletus possibly stated that everything is made of water (Russel, B. 1946/2010 History of Western Philosophy, p.33)

Maybe he meant that everything comes from water. Regarding life, as we know it, this is a quite accurate statement.

I do not know why I am writing about this. Probably I just want to mention one of the Pre-Socratics to demonstrate that I like to read about them and about ancient Greece.

I could also write a poem called “Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Anaximenes” for all those who know that one of them did not belong to the Milesian school.

I am fascinated with all the radical statements of the ancient Greek philosophers and with the fact that they knew so much.

After history at school, after chemistry and after sociology I am about to become addicted to philosophy.

But what good comes out of that?

Nothing. I will loose my job, my wife and my dog, to live in barrel.

Ah, I do not have a wife; maybe I will start studying philosophy later, after the marriage, to obtain a more dramatic effect.

Nevertheless, I am going to finish this pathetic entry with the poem, promised above.

Miletus

Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Anaximenes

Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Anaximenes

Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Anaximenes

Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Anaximenes

Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes

Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes

Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes

Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes

Anaximenes, Anaximander, Anaxagoras

Anaximenes, Anaximander, Anaxagoras

Anaximenes, Anaximander, Anaxagoras

Anaximenes, Anaximander, Anaxagoras

Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Anaximander

Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Anaximander

Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Anaximander

Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Anaximander

Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras

Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras

Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras

Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, Anaximander

Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, Anaximander

Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, Anaximander

Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, Anaximander

Thales, Thales, Thales

END

It is very important to read the poem with proper emphasis, speed and enthusiasm.

Last Retro Stanford

Day Nine Tuesday June 21 2011

I am back from California. There’s a lot to say about the last seven days. Where shall I start?

O.K. For me it was my first time out of Europe. In addition to that I have a positive balance on my bank account for the first time since 2005 and I put my finger into the Pacific Ocean also for the first time in my life: My personal Balboa experience.

After arriving back home I have also joined with Twitter and I plan to start a real blog, not a static, old fashioned storytelling prosaic sort of thing. This of course could include what I am writing now.

One of the main conclusions of my trip is that I really start to get into Lukacz's idea of “Desantropomorphization” of science. Social sciences and humanities are always criticized for being not enough formal and too subjective and too probabilistic. After three more days with the “upper-crust” of synthetic biology I can see where engineering and natural science has its anthropomorphic limitations too. At the SB5.0 I experienced a new scientific community’s attempt at communicating science. On the one hand there were many beautiful, inspiring, subtle and fascinating talks and posters. On the other hand I was reminded of one of my professors’ (Franz Wagner) quotes: “I think 5000 years ago we had two full suitcases of knowledge how to deal with the world, somehow we have lost all of this in the process of civilization and through science we have at least rediscovered about two used tissues from those suitcases.” Except very few talks that somehow showed a meta-perspective of what is going on in Synthetic Biology there was much detail (in itself often very clever and sophisticated work) but it all gave the impression of individual islands of knowledge that start to reach out for other shores but don’t have a clue where to head for or where the wind might be blowing.

Of course it is a real marvel to be able to write whole genomes, to master the alphabet of life in genomics and proteomics. But what shall we write? Machines, monsters and miracles are waiting to be designed. In fact no one really knows how yet. The words and sentences are still much too expensive to write new books of life. Craig Venters admirable achievements are copy and paste poetry that involves huge amounts of resources and manpower.

Maybe one of the problems, a problem of science in general is our anthropomorphic approaches and assumptions. “One gene, one PhD student” is one of the quotes that I still have in mind from one of the talks at the conference. It seems to be obvious for something as complicated (the word that was used at least once in every talk) as living systems it needs systems of knowledge to understand and rebuild them. Although SB in terms of community and institutionalization has grown substantially recently, it is still like a primordial soup of individual RNA’s and proteins that have come together in a SB labelled cell membrane for the first time, but who have no real idea of how to interact to form a functioning metabolism. There are some strands leading to that, like the ideas of engineering principles and standardization and also reproduction has been started with the help of iGem. Nevertheless it seems a long time to go until we put “the first mouse/marsupial hybrid on Mars”.

Wiebke

Day 14 November 3 2011

Since today I know that Wiebke is a German female name. To my surprise you find naked Wiebkes very quickly if you google her. Although everyone knows that porn is only three mouse clicks away it was astonishing to find arty portraits of naked women unintended only one and a half clicks away. This is 21^st century stuff indeed.

Nevertheless, this was very helpful to determine said Wiebke's gender rather quickly.

I do not intend to offend any Wiebkes but I have not encountered one of you before today. I guess the Bauernbergpark man and the Taubenmarkt man do not know many Wiebkes either.

However, now for something completely different: I would still like to find connections between eastern and western thinking. This is rooted in “Zen or the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” that I got as a present years ago. I wonder what happens if our Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-mindedness meets the holistic concepts of the east. Basically I do not know enough of both. Therefore I promise to start with Russel’s “History of Western Philosophy” after finishing Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit”. The sheer difference in size of the two books makes me laugh, because I think in the real world there is more bullshit than philosophy.

As a mere pupil of Zen, as a humble student of psychology, as a writing novice, I surely contribute to this desperate ratio.

See, there is no coherence or consistency in the posts. From Wiebke to philosophy: it is just crazy.

Nevertheless I carry on. I have studied Douglas Adams thoroughly, and the concept of the interconnectedness of all things links the first name Wiebke to philosophy, although there is no such entry in Russel’s book. (I have really made sure that there is none; there is “will” as a term used by Aristotle instead J)

Inertia keeps me from reading too much of western or eastern philosophy. However, this reminds me that I got interrupted when reading Suzuki yesterday. I have to finish a chapter about bowing.

I hope to get to know this Wiebke personally. Then I will bow to her, I promise.