Today there is an article about how new research has refuted a previous study by a researcher who claimed that a certain bacteria found in arsenic-rich sediments in California’s Mono Lake does not require phosphorus like all other life forms do. This is all good and well. This is all normal and what is supposed to happen in scientific fields of research. People investigate things, find things, study them, and based on their study make conclusions.
But a conclusion made was incorrect. The subsequent research refuted the claim that the bacteria did not need phosphorous to grow.
Perhaps it is not merely making conclusions, but the way that conclusions are made and stated which is important. Whatever the case, the original researcher appears to have lost her position at the USGS in part as a result. If that is the case, it is very sad.
We are supposed to make mistakes. As a classical musician who plays violin, I have long appreciated the importance of being able to make mistakes. In fact my violin playing taught me a long time ago one very important lesson: In order to be good at something one has to first be able to be bad at it.
But today we live in a world where there are many things in which people are neither bad nor good. We live in a world that is increasingly putting a premium on perfection, at the expense of people being cowardly and fearful of being imperfect.
So, externally, it would seem like things are advancing forward, as there is all this emphasis on perfection. But in reality, things are going backwards, because we all have to learn how to be imperfect in order to grow, in order to accomplish things.
But today the accomplishments are mostly meager. People create music with electronic machines and it gets classified as music, but it is a far cry from even a basic melody played with care, affection, and intimacy on an acoustic instrument. Even while there’s this supposed resurgence of vinyl as being more “analog” or somehow natural, the music that is recorded on it is digital music created by machines.
Music is all about vibrations, resonance, and just as importantly stillness. It is the intermixture of resonances and stillness which can take it to lofty heights. There are resonances which run through everything in the cosmos, down to our beating hearts and breathing lungs. Acoustic music has the possibility of resonating in ways that are very profound. Just like in Indian classical music there are these very complex ragas, some of which consist of hundreds or thousands of beats that go in complex cycles.
There are ragas all around us in everything, resonating with the galaxy, the planets, the Sun and Moon, the sky, the forests, everything. But to tap into that kind of resonance requires abandoning fear and hesitation and taking a chance, making a sound, one’s own sound, whether it be perfect or imperfect, for it is through imperfection that we find the meaning of perfection, not by fearing and avoiding imperfection.
I think what the woman who made the initial research on the bacteria did was great. If nothing else, her research shook things up and made a stir and, because of that many others became intensely interested and determined to pursue the truth. That is exactly the way its supposed to work.
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