I’m a little kid building a castle on the beach. With the first gleams of the day breaking the serenity of the blue sea water, I take hold of my first grasp of sand, immersed and dyed golden in the sunlight, beginning a day’s work with a religious heart. May the little kid build up her castle.

I’m here to build my own castle, a castle that is unique. Maybe a ball-like castle? No, it can’t be LIKE a ball or anything, for it should be unique. I build something but pull it down. Every evening I leave empty-handedly with my shadow teasing me all the way home. The beach boasts of no castle, as serene as the mysterious sea water.

God says, every castle is unique but no castle is unique absolutely. You can never really CREATE anything. My eyes go moist, but I know it’s true.

The following morning I pick up my heart, roll down my bed, and dash desperately towards the beach. I build a castle and leave, a castle with no window or door. So close it is to the sea water that before I turn my head over again it is devoured by the sea water. My eyes well up. God says, it is washed away but I promise you there leaves a trace.

The third morning I brace myself, jogging to the beach. I build a castle and leave, a castle with window and door, but without curves or decorations. One foot farther it is from the sea water that it allows my second look before washed away.

Every morning I take a walk to the beach. I build my castle and leave, a castle more complicated each day and farther from the sea water. However farther, it’s still washed away the next day. But I remember and believe in god’s words there leaves a trace.

On the day when I turn forty, I build a somewhat unique castle, magnificent and glorious. It won’t take long for it’s to be washed away. But this time I’m more convinced there leaves a trace.

I continue building my castle every day at the age of sixty. Many kids get intrigued by this, and we together build our castle.

One evening I feel sick when I return home, I understand I won’t be able to build my castle tomorrow. But I’m not sad, for I know the kids are carrying on. They’ll build better castles.

A clear night sanded with stars, my castle is welcomed into the sea water, and I’m welcomed into god’s bosom. The next morning, little kids, young people, middle-aged people, and people over sixty will be building castles on the beach. I’ll be a gleam of sunlight, embracing their cool, naked feet.

Explanation:

I’m a little kid pursuing science with a religious heart. May the kid be a scientist.

Since I’m so small, I’m still a little kid, I can have grand dreams. I’m determined to push forward a novel theory one day, a theory that embraces all the possible answers to how the nature is. But I don’t know where and how to start. I’m totally in dilemma.

Neils Bohr, a famous physicist says, it is wrong to think that the task of science is to find out how the nature is, we say about nature. My eyes go moist. But I understand this is the only possible goal and orientation.

I get down to fundamental definitions, principles and methods. So many things you never used after being learned that they are gradually forgotten. So why do I learn them? My teacher says knowledge learned can be put into two categories: one for direct use and the other indirect, which means you benefit because your way of thinking is changed. Knowledge you forget, but there leaves trace in your mind.

Every day I learn something, forget something, and discover something. They get more complicatedly each day, but they unavoidably are thrown over. But I believe there leaves a trace.

On the day I turn forty, I discover a responding pathway inside the cell, which perfectly agrees with facts and data gained from experiments. But I know it won’t take long for it to be replaced by a superior theory. But this time it leaves an obvious trace.

I continue doing research at the age of sixty. Many student follow me pursuing science.

One evening I feel sick when I return home, I understand I won’t be able to return to the lab tomorrow. But I’m not sad for I know my students are carrying on. They’ll come to a better conclusion.

A clear night sanded with stars, I’m welcomed into god’s bosom. He says many thanks for my interpretation of his ideas through the language of science. I only begin to understand that Bohr, my teacher, and all the scientists coming before me are gods.

Little kids, college students, and scientists pursue science in their own way. I’ll be a god, comforting and encouraging them when they find it hard to persist.

Reading Journal Two:

One day during the dead week of last term, I was busy preparing for the math examination. I enjoy numbers and never find it a problem to concentrate. But the place where I studied was simply wrong.

Bathed in the noon sunshine I heard something that was once so familiar but then a little alienated to me, the sound of the piano. I traced it till I got to the top floor of the Art Building. In a small room, a student was having his piano lesson. The gloomy light from the electrical lamp effused on his music score, provoking every note as well as my memory. The rustling sound of the teacher’s pencil dancing across the music score just can’t be more familiar to me. I couldn’t help weeping, with my head quickly buried in arms. All those years when I made every effort learning to play the piano flooded back.

Part One: About my piano teacher and the two kinds of music educators

My piano teacher was an excellent one. She made every lesson such a pleasant journey, an aesthetic experience, according to the definition from the book “A Philosophy of Music Education”. She hardly plays the piano as a model for me to copy as many teachers do, but uses singing as her special way, so that sounds interpret sounds. Sounds tell their own story. Music educators are divided into two kinds in that book: Referentialists, who go out of their way to search for a message and deliver it by narration or description. And Formalists, who believe in Absolutism which indicates that the sound and what they do are inherently meaningful, and if one is to share their “meaning”, one must attend to the sounds and not to anything the sounds might remind one of in the extraaesthetic realm outside the music. My piano teacher perfectly combine the two. Her fabulous voice replaces the plain narrative words, which at the same time helps focus on sound itself.

After passing level ten, I worked as a piano tutor for three years. I don’t have a beautiful voice, but I hate the idea of being merely a technician. “The music fades from consciousness, providing a pleasant background against which to daydream.” I tried my own way of “inducing” the kids to daydream, but that was something like a referentialist unfortunately.

Part Two: About self-expression and self-exposure

   … an inner agitation that is discharged at once in a laugh or cry, passes away with its utterance. To discharge is to get rid of, to dismiss; to express is to stay by, to carry forward in development, to work out to completion. A gush of tears may bring relief, a spasm of destruction may give outlet to inward rage. But where there is no administration of objective conditions, no shaping of materials in the interest of embodying the excitement, there is no expression what is sometimes called an act of self-expression might better be termed one of self-exposure; it discloses character — or lack of character — to others. In itself, it is only a spewing forth.

I never regard music as a tool of venting emotions or uneasy feelings. Maybe the wrong sense of respect for music restricted to some extent the wildness and vigor which should be displayed at times. I habitually control my emotion and passion so that I’ve never been able to truly give my heart out, both when playing the piano and in everyday life. Maybe that’s my biggest obstacle. Self-expression and self-exposure seem very difficult to me, especially when I’m not alone. That’s actually one reason why I didn’t go further in the long way of learning to play the piano or take up music as my major instead of a hobby. However, I still dislike the idea that music, especially music composing has anything to do with self-expression or self-exposure. It should be similar to the relations between Referentialists and Formalists. The emotion sometimes lies only in your sub consciousness, claiming their existence in the form of sound or a line of music notes. So the performer or the composer is simply a medium instead of a subject. That makes it seem more appealing to me.

Part Three: About the need of such a philosophy

It is crucial that young people preparing to enter the profession of music education develop an understanding of the importance of their chosen field. Perhaps at no other time in life is the need for self-justification as pressing as when a young person is preparing to take his place as a contributing member of society. For such people there is an almost desperate need for a philosophy which provides a mission and a meaning for their professional lives. This is especially the case when, as in music education, the value of the field is not fully understood by its members, and is perhaps ever less understood by professionals in related fields. Given the lack of convincing arguments about the importance of music education, the philosophical insecurity which manifests itself in superficial bases of self-justification, the general defensiveness of music educators toward their colleagues in other aspects of music and education, it is all too clear why so many music education undergraduates are more or less cynical, detached, insecure, defensive.

Failed to find out a good justification for pursuing science I come up with the idea of redigging the garden of music. That’s why I found these books to read. I believe such a philosophy is needed in every field. Otherwise, we do things without any understanding of the original why. I used to approve this idea, for purpose seems to be a little secular to be considered. But now I find it’s not logically right to do things without any understanding of its meaning. Besides, when we go through those hard drills for skillful technician, we do need this philosophical security. Different from science, music does not require a base or a core. The only vector in the universe is entropy. Life is anti-entropy, we need negative entropy to maintain the discipline or order inside our body and upon which metabolism occurs. Only when it comes to the diversity of life can we perceive something increasing entropy, in the form of the expanding information of versatile species. But music is different. Music itself is creation. The large sources of originality keep it thriving. That’s one thing I find exciting about music. At least, you needn’t worry about the future of music

Finally: What is music to me?           

A friend of mine, a weird boy once told me that he’s the kind of person who leads a life of debauchery, jumping from one girl to another. But he really has a wish that a virtuous wife is forever waiting for him every night he gets home. This kind of attitude definitely can’t be approved. But to me, music is like that kind of wife, who is always quietly waiting for me, in spite of all the hustle and bustle of the world.

Reference Books:

A Philosophy of Music Education   By Bennett Reimer

The Meaning of Art               By Herbert Read

Reading Journal One: The Return

“A little child standing under the dark blue sky, speaking emotionally to her mother: I’m thinking about dad’s ultimate truth…”

A roommate of mine was retelling me a science fiction story, tearful when she came to the last words. Here the ultimate truth is not “dad’s”, it’s the nature of the whole universe, this scientific world. And it’s the light shed on scientist’s beautiful minds. I was dumbed, striking me inside is an aesthetic experience of the whole thing.

This winter vacation, I returned to where I used to belong to, a group of the so-called ‘problem youth’. I was disappointed when I couldn’t hide what I had changed in some way during the last semester. When I was trying to say something, they laughed at my habit of “explaining”. There needs a bridge. Had I quit school in Senior Two against all the persuasion…

Why did I choose to continue struggling in the path of pursuing science?

Stage One: Science as Application

For more than ten years when I was young, I had been connected to the biggest hospital in our city, where my mother works. Almost all the people I admired were surgery doctors. I mistakenly regarded medical treatment as science. But whatever, as Feynman put it, “the popular definition of science is partly technology, too. The most obvious characteristic of science is its application, the fact that as a consequence of science one has a power to do things.” Here, to relieve every pain of the patients and to cure the disease.

Stage Two: Science is All & Belief in an Ultimate Truth

Then I despise the idea of application, regarding science as something more superior than technology. Yuan Longping succeeded in hybridizing rice, leading to a solution of famine. However, when the next person hopes to hybridize wheat, it’s still a pains-taking process, for Yuan’s blind methods are not things fundamental. On the contrary, a fragment of DNA transferred into a certain bacteria, replicates itself. There’s no direct goal or use, but it is science for it contributes to new theory formation.

So the new stage I reached coincided with what Feynman defines as the second aspect of science: “its contents, the things that have been found out. This is the yield. This is the gold. This is the excitement, the pay you get for all the disciplined thinking and hard work. The work is not done for the sake of an application. It is done for the excitement of what is found out.” This idea is certainly followed by my question. What do the things found out lead to? The ultimate truth. That was the pious hope of mine and my dear roommate’s (mentioned in the first two paragraphs).

“I want to know God’s thoughts. The rest are just details… God does not roll dices.”

——A. Einstein

I was highly motivated. When I turned the pages of the book Biology, which is more than 1300 pages thick, my hands couldn’t help trembling with excitement. Through the nights I studied alone, I held the belief that one day, I would be a sailor — with all the deceased and the new blood — on the voyage towards the ultimate truth. It’s the first chirping of birds in dawn. It’s the only light in darkness.

Stage Three: No Ultimate Truth

“Thus it seems Einstein was doubly wrong when he said God does not play dice. Not only does God definitely play dice, but sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.”

——Stephen Hawking

God does roll dices. My faith clashed and broke. Evidence is enough. In micro level, to see where a particle is, light should be shone on it. But by Planck’s work, one can’t use an arbitrarily small amount of light. One has to use at least one quantum. This will disturb the particle, and change its speed in a way that can’t be predicted. So God is definitely bound by this Uncertainty Principle. And in macro level, things appear no better. Black holes are out of sight. Not only do the particles and unlucky astronauts that fall into a black hole, never come out again, but also the information that they carry, is lost forever, at least from our region of the universe.

“Our Region”, what is our region of universe? In other words, what’s the subject upon which we study, we do science? I come up with a feeling that the whole process of scientific research can be compared to a balloon, ever expanding, which increases the spectrum of the unknown, but where’s the core of it? It’s something hollow. Worse still, it can’t be expanding all its way, for it will reach regions that we can’t observe, where information fled. We are locked in cages; cages that are not made by ourselves, but by science itself; cages ever existed. The snake holds its tail in mouth. Micro and macro level unity, the dream, the ultimate truth… If our subject has neither a core nor a prospect of infinite expanding, just like a snake has no head or tail, how can it come to unity? Where’s the ultimate truth?

This is how I lost my faith in science, like a person lost his identity, his self-definition, being completely disoriented. I thought of changing my major to music-composing (to be discussed in my second reading journal), but as my love for biology is deep-rooted, I decided to try to persuade myself, try to find a meaning of science.

Can I still believe in the ultimate truth?

My grandmother was sort of a leader of the local church, though an outstanding surgery doctor at the same time. I was embraced by stories from the Bible since a very early age. The religious atmosphere permeates into every corner of my family. Once at the age of seven, I lied to my mother, I was blamed by her in front of the church gate. In her words, every promise I made will be clearly remembered and supervised by God. However, in those violent adolescent years, family and the God are the last I turn to. In the winter vacation of Senior Three, I was even driven away from home, living in a small cold rent room, simply for I shouted to my mother there’s no God at all.

So here follows the question. If I still believe in the ultimate truth, it’s definitely to be my God. Science becomes religion. Can I accept that?

I remembered Prof. He Dacheng’s (the most respectable professor of Cell Institute of BNU) words: “some scientists in the western countries believe in God for they think the big wisdom is in the palm of God.” So if you are working for God and obeying God’s will, you are in some way connected to the universe, your actions have a meaning in the greater world, and that’s an inspiring aspects.

This time, as I continue my reading, Feynman jumped out again: “So I don’t think it is possible to not get into a conflict if you require an absolute faith in metaphysical aspects, and at the same time I don’t understand how to maintain the real value of religion for inspiration if we have some doubt as to that.”

If I went on understanding life as religion, I would finally find myself in a more serious contradiction. So I reluctantly ruled out any hint of ultimate truth.

I have no good reason to continue with my biology, with any study of science.

Stage Four: Simply Curiosity

“The pursuit of curiosity about the basic fact in nature has proven throughout the history of medical science to be the most practical, the most cost-effective route to successful drugs and devices. Investigations that had no medicine: x-rays, penicillin, the polio vaccine, monoclonal antibodies, genetic engineering, and recombinant DNA. These have all come from the pursuit of curiosity about questions in physics, chemistry, and biology, apparently unrelated — at the outset — to a specific medical problem.”

——Roger D. Kornberg

Curiosity, that’s so intuitive. I was attracted by this humanistic idea. It always seems to me that real scientists are not goal-oriented. They are like small and naive kids, strongly pushed by something inside their heart — curiosity maybe. So it seems a good enough justification.

Last month spent with my old buddies, I bet the energy I assimilated from beer is more than from food. We did fully get the pleasure of drinking Tsingtao beers, but no one can figure out what the pleasure really was. So it is with doing science. The sense of self-satisfaction never makes any sense to me. I guess if we only come to enjoy life with the absence of any meaning, we can no longer be regarded as a young person.

Till now, I have no more ways to make myself stick to biology, or to say science, for I’m totally robbed of the meaning of it all. The root is, I feel reluctant to believe in progress. If the world is not infinite, in other words the “our region” exists, say one million billion scientific laws to be found out, when the number of the discovered increases from 0.3 million billion to 0.4 million billion, can it be recognized as progress? Interiorly it progressed, but exteriorly it doesn’t make much difference.

Yesterday, I met my biology teacher of high school, who is now a student again, post-graduate in biochemistry at Tsinghua University. He resigned from our high school with a religious heart of science. I turned to him for help. He said, “The meaning of science? Now I only consider how I can publish my essays earlier, how I can graduate as soon as possible, how I can make more money and have my own child…”

He became pragmatic, but I somehow found the point. I was wrong. I pondered over the meaning of an activity with no emotion, no social characteristics, no practical conditions involved. It’s not being idealistic, but being stupid, just standing on the edge of escaping responsibility for the society and making choices. Science can be simple, so can be life itself…

Reference books:

The Meaning of it all              By Richard P. Feynman

Does God Play Dice?             By Stephen Hawking

Biology 6^th.ed    By Peter H. Raven & George B. Johnson

Understanding Life as Chemistry   By Roger D. Kornberg

In the passed two months I afforded plenty of time for reading. I devoured twelve books with great interest and passion. They are Biography of Darwin, Analyses of Being and Nothing, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Wolf Totem, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Art of Being Human, The Medusa and the Snail, Why We Get Sick, Sophie’s World, Art and Science, Infinite in all directions and the Unbearable Lightness of Being. I read them to enjoy, to gain knowledge, by which I refer to facts and conclusions, and most importantly, to be inspired, equipping myself with a more scientific way of thinking and a better understanding of life. I’d like to choose one book from my reading list to write about: The Art of Being Human.

The book tells the story of outstanding achievements in the humanities throughout history, aiming at communications between authors and readers of the enthusiasm for the humanities as experience for the mind and the emotions. By learning to think critically and becoming acquainted with the creative arts, one will also better understanding himself.

Two chapters impress me most: Chapter One, The Art of Thinking Critically; and Chapter Six, Music.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom,
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodland I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

----A. E. Housman

This particular poem, for all its famous simplicity, has sometimes appeared on standardized tests. Critical thinkers learn to enjoy tricky questions, such as this one: Read the poem, and then indicate the poet’s age. The impulsive reader who has not yet become a critical thinker and so is an impatient test-taker sees “threescore and ten” and later on, the number “seventy” and concludes that that must be the poet’s age. The critical thinker, primarily responding to the poem’s beauty, is aware that the answer is twenty. It is possible to do well in life without knowing this poem of the poet’s age when he wrote it, but it is less possible to do well without awareness.

This example of what is a critical thinker like reminds me of days in my primary school. I’m born slow in art subjects, not being sensitive and delicate enough to seize the writers’ feelings most of the time. I am always trying to use my logic when going deep into a novel or something. But as I read more and more, it seemed that the ice inside my heart gradually melted, absorbed by the beauty of human language and emotions submerging those negligible logic and facts. These words from Chapter One indicate the importance of being aware what information we should tend to capture: the poem’s beauty instead of the dull numbers. Besides, from my own point of views, this process of being aware is not that you tell yourself: I’ll pay attention to certain detail, or what kind of detail, which will surely make us act like using formula again; but that you follow the writer’s feeling, saying the poem to your heart, then let your heart and the writer’s persuade you that you’re still young. In this way, the writer can hear your resonance or empathy toward his or hers, so that reading becomes interactive.

As refer to Chapter Six, there’re two points I want to mention.

Part One:

Many people are familiar with this tradition and want no other. For them, jazz, ragtime, blues, rock, country and rap music may be listed in the category of the ‘unfamiliar’, and we urge them to explore new possibilities of enrichment from different styles. After the exploration, they may still prefer a Mozart opera to a rock concert, but it will be a choice based on experience, not on the refusal to hear other sounds.

We may share such experiences: when I was a small kid, I used to hate eating carrots, eggplants, bean curd, etc. etc. My mother would always complain to my relatives about how picky I was about foods. I tended to remind meself: ‘I don’t like …’ Actually as we grow up, our tongue is gifted with more tastes by God. So I regret to question myself: ‘How many times had I refused to try a bite before I found out the eggplants are that delicious?’

So I turned to believe we shouldn’t say: ‘It’s totally unpleasant.’ until we experience it, nor should we say: ‘I’m not interested in it at all (even without a first go).’ The smelly cigars are really best cheese or sweets in the mouth of a chain-smoker. We try, no matter we succeed or err, accept or oppose, as long as we can be a little bit more conscious of what the world is like.

Part Two:

The baroque style was not limited to music. The entire period was characterized by architectural grandeur an elaborate use of color and ornamentation. … The term baroque was taken from French and Portuguese words that meant ‘imperfect pearl’ and applied to the new style, which was far from classical simplicity. Architecture made abundant use of curved rather than straight lines, and music was exceptionally complex.

… …

… As the era progressed, composers, especially in Italy, sought to outdo one another in the intricacy of their compositions. They made strong use of counterpoint, playing one melodic line against another with both melodic lines being given equal value and dominance.

Harmony, of course, had been standard in music since the early Renaissance, but Bach’s counterpoint carried complexity a step further. And Bach became the master of complexity. Congregations at first must have been overwhelmed by what they heard.

… …

Confined both geographically and professionally, Bach formed liberation in exploring the possibilities of musical language. The baroque style required not only long highly fluid melodies and countermelodies, but also improvisation, a spontaneous variation or set of variations on a given theme. Through improvisation he could take wings and soar into the endless skies of inner space.

Although Bach lived to see a Germany that began to recognize music, few believed that music could express a composer’s inner feelings. Bach’s music is frequently labeled ‘intellectual’, but there is indeed an emotional side to it. Bach’s great Tocata and Fugue in D Minor draws the listener into vortex of sensations that are almost indescribable. The ear discerns the many melodic strands that play against each other, and the inner eye, translates the sounds into patterns of light and lines that crisscross, engulf each other, and continually change into shapes never before seen of imagined. Bach must have heard these sounds inside him, must have felt emotion. Surrendering to this music, we the listeners find ourselves visiting strange inner landscapes flooded with both thoughts and feelings.

… …

… The fugue allows for the simultaneous hearing of different melodies played or sung; it is a swift-moving form, stabilized by the laws of counterpoint. That is, the melodic lines heard simultaneously must complement, not conflict, with each other. We need only listen to the D Minor performed on an organ to be astounded that one pair of hands could master so difficult a composition. The idea behind the fugue is to demonstrate that what for the average person would do as impossibility is indeed well within the capabilities of the performers. It allows both composer and performer to display their virtuosity. At the same time, the intricacies of the form require strong guidelines as well as enormous technical skills, developed over long years of practice. The result often sounds as though the composer were allowing his imagination free reign, but in actuality the music is rigorously disciplined. The major jazz composers and performers of our time are often highly trained musicians whose flights of improvisation follow definite rules similar to the fugue of Bach.

The music of Bach parallels in sound the richness of the entire baroque period. Music, rather than art of architecture, may serve as the ideal expression of baroque taste, because its linear (sequential) form allows us to experience its complexities little by little, note by note, rather than have them overwhelm the vision as many baroque interiors do. 

Complexity and Simplicity:

Many respectable people say they like Mozart, enjoy his simplicity. But that’s RETURN to innocence or naivety. I believe one that has never experience complexity is not fully aware of what is complexity thus cannot understand what simplicity means. I used to take my teachers’ compliments ‘You are a very rational student.’ For granted until I realized if one had not experienced a whole period of being emotional, he can never be regarded as rational. Likewise, appreciating complexity facilitates me to truly appreciate simplicity.

Complement and Conflict:

In piano leveling tests, four pieces of music are assigned, one of which is composed by Bach. Thanks to my piano teacher’s unique teaching method, I got the highest marks of those pieces of Bach’s when passing Levels 8, 9 and 10. What method? Singing the melody inside. Your two hands may be completely engaged managing the three parts either in Inventions et Sinfouias or Fugue in The Well-Tempered Clavier, but the melody is so clear and harmonious in the bottom of your heart. That’s the most charming feature I found in Bach’s works.

Last but not least I have to say this book, The Art of Being Human provided poetic language. I’d like to end this reading journal by a few words of Pablo Neruda’s, uttering upon receiving the Nobel Prize: All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song- but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.