Why I write ✍🏽
Research is a journey of the mind. It’s not an easy one, but requires consistency, critical observation, and ability to communicate thoughts and ideas. These thoughts and ideas are often times unique, built upon the existing knowledge of science. Although science attempts to represent the physical world in the form of objective truths, it is also important to understand that it is not just a collection of truths, but a way of critical and creative thinking.
As Carl Sagan famously mentioned,
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge
My research journey began by learning how to leave space for thinking, to think, then learning to write what I thought about. I realized that research writing involves collecting as much as reasonably possible situations and conditions that lead to the observations. And so goes with assumptions and simplifications while analyzing collected data or while developing predictive models.
Thus, the importance of documentation slowly surfaced. I started enjoying the process of writing as it provided an avenue into observations, understanding the correlations between observations, about the living world - personal, scientific, and everything in between. It allowed me to be a better researcher and a better person.
Therefore, I write.
What I write about 📝🪴
Even though writing allowed me to assimilate such observations and correlations, create elaborate stories, the more scientific knowledge I gained during the Ph.D, during the experience of living an adult life, the more I realized that true knowledge has no bounds.
True knowledge seems like liquid water that you can never hold in your palms. Slipping away, the more I learnt about it. This seems almost a paradox to gaining expertise: the more you know, the more you are aware of what you don’t know.
Practicing writing helps me sit with that uncertainty. It gives me a way to follow observations, make connections, and continue learning.
Science gives you observations, writing provides the opportunity to carry them somewhere
Essays
I consider work not as labor, but a fundamental park of how the human mind makes sense of patterns and reality. Research has taught me how to observe these patterns closely and I enjoy following these ideas beyond the boundaries of my regular work.
- Thoughts - collection of meanderings of the mind, such as the short essay on Art and Science.
Reflections:
To understand my own experience, I reflect on them and try to share what I learn along the way
- Backpacking - beginning with First long backpack in the U.S.
Who am I writing for
- For myself, 🙋🏽♂️
- a mysterious thing called sanity, 🧘🏽♂️
- and whoever finds this journey and knowledge interesting or helpful. 🙏🏽