A description of the importance of illustrations in scientific books appears elsewhere on this blog. Illustrations help convey a writer’s thinking. However, I must mention a notable exception.
The work of the Nobel prize-winning ethologist Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) is notable for not being illustrated. (According to a colleague at the Konrad Lorenz Institute.) Indeed, flicking through some of his books, except for one table of figures, all I saw was prose.
There is a type of post that I am referring to here as ‘snippets’. This word is an everyday word meaning something small. That is its only characteristic. An alternative term I might have used is ‘micro-blog’. However, I wanted to use the word ‘snippet’ as it denotes much more.
So expect anything but small.
The introductory post about definitions (Definitions (101)) noted that finding a simple definition for terms and concepts is often problematic. Definitions may change over time as word use changes. The changeability of language is easy to overlook. The academic literature demonstrates this. Older textbooks show subtle differences in vocabulary. Words often have slightly different connotations. In even older textbooks, this becomes particularly noticeable. Unfortunately, scientists only read the most recently published work. Old books and academic articles go largely unread. Therefore, scientists are less likely to appreciate how language changes. When scientists think they are expressing ideas clearly and unambiguously, they are not. There is an added complication: different individuals may interpret the same statement differently. Using words alone to express ideas requires considerable care.
A characteristic of academic texts is their inclusion of visual material ranging from simple line drawings to detailed photographs. Tangible physical objects and intangible mental concepts are each presented. In this, we must include graphs as these give data shape - and perhaps tables since the numbers they contain can sometimes demonstrate patterns. Using visual material allows the writer to convey ideas without words.
Academic books and articles were not always well illustrated. Limitations to printing, in the past, meant a heavy reliance on words alone. Reading such works was onerous. Today, there is greater scope for conveying ideas.
When we are thinking, what is it that appears in our minds? (Interestingly, the word ‘appears’ - a visual word - seems the most apt to use here.) Do we ‘see’ pictures, or do we ‘see’ sentences? Is our thinking visual or verbal? I believe that, whatever it is, it is more closely akin to the former rather than the latter. That would also seem to make sense. As we evolved as a species, our visual sense preceded our use of words. As we develop as infants, the use of our eyes precedes our use of words. The visual precedes the verbal and may even have primacy. I consider myself somebody who engages very much in what might be called ‘Visual Thinking’. My notebooks are full of diagrams, doodles and scrawls. Although there are also many words jotted down, proper sentences are rare. What I write is augmented by symbols. Ideas are linked using lines and arrows. What I am describing is something akin to a mind map.
Even though they include words, mind maps are predominantly visual ways of presenting ideas. They provide a way of turning what is in our minds into something visual. They help us make sense of what is in our minds. Our ideas can, in turn, be conveyed to others quite rapidly. What we see - through our eyes or mentally - cannot be expressed accurately using only words. It is impossible to reproduce with precision even a simple line drawing from a verbal description alone. (Try it!)
The same image can mean different things to different people in a beneficial way. Likewise, new insights can come from depicting extant data differently. As a post-graduate student, I remember looking at data plotted by a colleague in a series of graphs. In light of something only I had read, I suggested a completely different interpretation of what the graphs showed. This realisation changed the whole course of my post-graduate work and the thesis I wrote.
Thus, visual material can provide scope for an enlargement of our knowledge and understanding in ways that I do not believe words can. I intend to devote some of my blog posts to visual material - augmented by a few words. These will be focused primarily on images that I find interesting or informative. I have collected these over many years. There will also be images I have been making for myself - for private use when trying to get to grips with an idea - or for presentations made in the past.
I want to use the idea of definitions as a literary device. I want to try to use definitions not as ends but as means.
When it comes to definitions, I am on dangerous ground. Nevertheless, it is ground that has the potential to be quite productive. One of my previous projects explored how disease and health might be defined. There is still no consensus. There is still no set of words upon which all can agree. It may be that a consensus about these concepts is impossible. Ideally, what we want in a definition is an explanation of these concepts in non-technical words that all can understand. We want to express something difficult in terms we can all find easy. But there is a problem. Ordinary, everyday terms are liable to subtle changes in meaning over time; this is something that words seem to do. Thus, any consensus couched in such words is open to change. Any verbally agreed consensus may eventually unravel.
I have not forgotten nor necessarily abandoned the project mentioned above. What I want to do instead is take my association with that project in different directions. By being involved in that earlier project, new insights and questions about the human body have arisen.
Despite the difficulty with defining what seem to be straightforward concepts, I include definitions here as a blog label. I do so because I want to take a different approach to defining. I was previously involved with trying to produce definitions in a more standard, analytical way. Here, I intend to be non-standard. As I begin this project, I have a couple of potential avenues in mind.
One is to inform readers about concepts not typically used in the scientific study of the human body. We hear of thinking outside the box. I intend to do this. However, this does not necessitate thinking outside of any frame of reference. Other disciplines may be said to have their own boxes. These constitute different ways of thinking and different frames of reference. Why not borrow from these? We can step into these boxes and try the different types of thinking we find there while trying to address our questions. After all, thinking inside somebody else's box is equivalent to thinking outside our box. Thus, I want to attempt to think outside our usual box but not so outside of any box as to have no working framework or support.
Something else I am seeking to do under the definitions label is approach the idea of defining concepts in a more off-the-wall way. The moral is that if defining is difficult, do it differently. What I have in mind is not easy to describe here - not least because my ideas are not yet fully formed. The following may suffice. It has been of Albert Einstein that he used to ask questions in a child-like way; he did not relinquish that mentality we all have as children. Accordingly, as children, we have explanations and definitions for things couched in child-like ways. These are ways of describing things that may seem bazaar if an adult were to come up with them. Einstein did not continue in this vein. However, I wish to do so. It is a certain child-like-ness when describing things that I want to explore (and exploit) when it comes to what seem to be intractable concepts and ideas. Even if our questions go unanswered, it will mean that we will view them in new and perhaps refreshing ways.
Websites commonly display a link entitled FAQs - standing for Frequently Asked Questions. When promoting a product or service, FAQs provide a quick and simple way of informing the visitor about what this may be. The assumption is that FAQs ask the basic questions a visitor might ask about what is on offer. For each question, there is a brief prepared answer. All it takes is a few clicks for the visitor to get what needs to be known.
It does not follow that Frequently Asked Questions are questions frequently asked. Indeed, it does not follow that FAQs ever get asked. As noted above, they are devices for providing information. It is probably no coincidence that when spoken as if it were a word, the abbreviation FAQs sounds like ‘Facts’ (especially if using a softened ‘t’ sound).
Although they take the form of questions, FAQs do not test our knowledge. They are not like examination questions. They are devices for providing essential information quickly and easily. But for a quirk of fate, we might have been looking at links entitled WYNTK - what-you-need-to-know. FAQs give the visitor need-to-know information. Therefore, FAQs are, in effect, need-to-ask questions. I am very interested in the idea that there are need-to-ask questions. So, I want to explore this characteristic of FAQs on this blog. When applied to the study of the human body, what are the fundamental need-to-ask questions and are they asked frequently enough?
FAQs have other uses. FAQs draw attention to potential gaps in our knowledge or understanding for which no simple, ready-made answers are available. There are questions asked since antiquity for which there are still no definitive answers. Having been asked for centuries, these are the most frequently asked questions. Such questions continue to be asked more for what we gain from asking than in anticipation of an answer. With potentially no answer, they cause us to think differently about a problem. The FAQ idea is used on this blog to explore things to puzzle over rather than provide you with ready-made answers. Where this strand of the blog goes, I cannot tell in advance.
For fun, here are two questions I shall call FAQs and which came to mind while drafting this post.
FAQ - Who wrote the first FAQ?
The question of who wrote the first FAQ is fundamental, although I suspect it is probably one of the least frequently asked. I mention it because it illustrates how an obvious question gets overlooked. Although philosophical discourse using question-and-answer techniques goes back into antiquity (not least to Plato’s dialogues featuring Socrates), these were more often used to draw out a particular response than to give a prepared answer.
A good candidate for the first to provide a set of FAQs in the modern sense may be Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). In his unfinished Summa Theologica (Summary of Theology), he wrote responses to common questions about Christianity. These provided information about what one needed to know about that religion. This approach is akin to the question-and-answer technique used for religious instruction in a catechism.
Medical students’ FAQ
When I taught anatomy to medical students, the question ‘Is it true that men have one rib less than women?’ was frequently asked. This question refers back, of course, to the Biblical story of the formation of Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. (See: Genesis 2:21).
I do not explore this type of FAQ on this blog. I mention it because it is about the human body and because with each new intake, students would ask about it. Finding an answer to this question is very simple and can be found in any anatomical textbook. (But to save you time, men and women each have the same number of ribs: 12 pairs. Nowadays, one might expect the number of ribs question to be superseded by one about the voracity of cloning a female from a male since there are chromosomal differences between the sexes.)
In the mid-1970s, I went to a meeting at Guy's Hospital in London to hear the eminent Home Office pathologist Professor Keith Simpson (1907-1985) talk about his work. It was an excellent and memorable evening. Simpson described things to which very few have access.
At one point, he described how, during strangulation, the body of the thyroid cartilage in the neck fractures diagonally. That, I remember thinking, was contrary to something I had read - albeit in an elementary textbook. (I may even have heard it mentioned in a classroom lecture).
At the end of the talk, the floor was open for questions. The first to speak was a woman with a 'snooty' voice and an overbearing manner to match. She did not so much ask a question as seek to impugn the speaker's integrity. She stated that in "book after book after book" that she had read, the cornu at the back of the thyroid cartilage were said to fracture during strangulation, not its body. "Which are we to believe," she concluded, "you or the books?"
A buzz went around the auditorium. The tone of the question was quite improper. That evening's meeting was the type of academic meeting at which the speaker and his work were each on display. The two become inseparable. It was not the type of meeting where research findings get presented, differences of opinion aired and heated arguments follow. (Even on those occasions, a speaker's integrity is unquestioned.)
Simpson was unphased. He was, in response, a perfect gentleman and, as a result, utterly devastating. "Madam", he replied, in an almost apologetic tone, "I can only tell you what I have seen during many years of experience." That would have been enough to answer his inquisitor, but he went on to expand - and this is the point of this anecdote. He pointed out (quoting his questioner) that "book after book after book" on the body is written, not from making dissections but from reading other books. In short, books of anatomy are the product of books of anatomy. Once an error creeps in, it gets perpetuated.
That is especially so when one reads uncritically. What Simpson had unintentionally highlighted was such an error. The inquisitor was somebody who had accepted the authority of textbooks uncritically. That is something quite common. I once had a student express surprise that anyone could doubt a textbook. She even described the contents as being 'set in stone'. Fortunately, one can take a chisel to stone.
Interestingly, the standard British textbook on forensic medicine - 'Simpson's Forensic Medicine' - now bears the name of that evening's speaker. It was first published as 'Forensic Medicine' in 1947 and must, ironically, have been the one not read by his inquisitor.
In my experience, the academic world is replete with anecdotes. The teaching of anatomy and physiology is no exception. It may even be especially predisposed to anecdotes. Textbooks are not the place to find anecdotes; they are typically dry, factual accounts of what needs to be known. They are full enough; the inclusion of anecdotal material is unwarranted. An academic article is not the place for anecdotes. Reference to them may occur on occasion but only when strictly necessary.
I do not believe anecdotes to be entirely trivial. Although they are often lighter in tone than other forms of academic discourse, they are not necessarily devoid of serious content.
Arguably, anecdotes form the storytelling heart of academia. (Often, this takes the form of spiteful stories about one’s colleagues. These are not the type of anecdotes I mean here.) All academic disciplines have their stories and folklore. These typically take the form of anecdotes. Through their telling and retelling, anecdotes inform those new to a discipline about how it operates. Anecdotes contribute to one’s initiation into a discipline and its thought processes. As such, anecdotes can contribute to a discipline’s rites of passage.
However, of greater importance, I believe, is how anecdotes contribute to what we know - or think we know - about a discipline’s subject matter. Much does not get reported or discussed in the academic literature. Not every experimental result or finding is published. A wealth of ideas gets circulated only by word of mouth because this is the only means available. It is via anecdote that these pass from one person to another. There is much to be learned from anecdotes - even at second or third-hand.
Progression through some professions relies on some form of apprenticeship. Here, experienced senior colleagues guide juniors. One of the characteristics of that guidance is its anecdotal tone. The role of anecdotes in scientific education is more significant than is usually acknowledged. So far as I am aware, their role has yet to be recognised formally. We have all benefited from them and have, in turn, passed them on for the benefit of others.
In one sense, my first post was the 'About this blog' page. That page explains the idea behind this blog. As a first post in the typical blog post sense, this is a brief note to describe the type of posts to expect hereafter. You will find a link to this post in the sidebar. I am updating this post as new forms of writing emerge. This blog uses notes I have been making for many years. Going through them, I find there are particular categories into which they tend to fall. These reflect the different literary forms towards which my various interests have gravitated.
For the core of this blog, you should expect brief prose pieces. I aim to keep these to a length that takes only minutes to read. From experience, those interested in or studying the human body do not want to plough through excess verbiage. They want facts and ideas: things of interest to think about. They do not usually want long, winding, intricate arguments. Things of interest - even amusement - are expressible in different ways.
These include:
Each of these has a post about it. Please click on the list above for a fuller description of how I approach each of these forms of writing.
After a more frequent posting schedule during the first months of this blog's life (when I was getting things established), I have now adopted a more tentative schedule, posting on the 3rd, 11th, 19th and 27th days of each month.
[Updated: 6th May 2024]