Friday, August 21, 2009
The Pains and Pleasures of Scientific Research
Research is hard work. I had underestimated that - and now I have to keep drinking the habitual morning and afternoon coffees to make it through the day. But in spite of the fact that I am working by myself in the lab for such long periods of time, I am loving every bit of it. It is quite painful and tedious at times, but inherently it has this internal beauty, a magnificent preciseness mixed with an unsatisfied longing for answers and unseen implications.
Scientific research is quite fascinating, teasing the mind, asking questions in order to understand and admire the complexity of Nature, even if it is trapped in a Petri dish or cell culture flask. Science is fun, and it ought to be so :)
Monday, August 17, 2009
Are We Really Free? (An Essay on Freedom - Week 4 @ JCU, Semester 2 2009)
The French Revolution marked the dawn of a new era, in which the European empires weakened as free and independent nations sprung all across the world, especially in the Americas. The search for Freedom would never be the same. The Liberty they were fighting for in those days was the independence from Ancestral Empires, which furiously tried to retain the absolute power around the figure of a King or Emperor.
In the vox populi of the 21st Century, people in ‘developed Western societies’ tend not to speak too much about the political or economical freedom they already enjoy. Of course not – that freedom they already enjoy (and take for granted) is because of the battles fought by their forefathers, valiant people who, like the Parisians, fought for the sake of an independent nation. The natural assumption would be that our present generation would enjoy the absolute freedom brought by political and economical liberty. But the reality is that even in our generation, humans continue to search for freedom. Past the politics and theories of market interventionism, deep inside Humanity lies the desire to enjoy a more holistic freedom, a freedom that will permeate absolutely every aspect of the individual.
Talking to a dear atheist friend, he commented me that he desires not to be affiliated with a religion, lest he puts his individual freedom in jeopardy. So, are some people still unable to attain the freedom they desire with all their hearts, even in the 21st Century? Is religion another Bastille that needs to be thrown, discarded and dealt with? Are there other Bastilles waiting for the final insurrection of Humanity?
Is Freedom defined as the capacity to do whatever we want to do, regardless of any constraints other than our personal decision?