Hello everyone, I'm Muna and I'm a Sophomore, a Biology major and hoping to declare my double major in CompSci soon. The first thing that popped into my mind when thinking about my first favorite technology was the walkman, it always made me excited to be able to listen to my favorite music whenever i wanted. This then evolved to become my iPod which comes with me everywhere I go and I was often given the nickname "the iPodder".

 Thursday's class brought up some interesting points.  I liked the idea of evolution being a story which explains the past.  Science is not an absolute, and nothing in it is true.  As Einstein said, everything is relative, and how Darwin perceived history is not necessarily how anyone else would.  I am not a science major, but science interests me because it can be both imaginative and logical.  Literature does not necessarily need to be logical, it just needs to be imaginative.  Science, in a way, is applying stories to real life and seeing if a particular story actually works.  Darwin's theory of evolution can apply to science, too.  Evolution is not what works best, but just what works.

I'm a little late to the game but I'm Toan and am a freshman at Haverford.  I don't really have any plans on a major yet but I've always had an inclination towards the sciences especially biology and chemistry.  However, I do enjoy english and other humanities courses.  What sparked my interest for this class was the fact that it was cross-listed between english and biology.  I wanted to see how traditional biology courses with clear-cut and (mostly) definite procedures/answers/methods could be intertwined with the creativity and free-spirited form of english literature (not saying that the sciences lack creativity).  Additionally, evolution as a topic intrigues me and I have yet to apply it to literature.

 I feel like this first week of class helped me to see how science as a whole is not as stiff or fixed as I often make it out to be. I have always been more interested in my english classes than my science classes, and  I love experiencing and interpreting other people's stories. To me, science has always seemed so distant, so unapproachable, especially compared to my beloved literature, which I found myself able to jump into. However, in class on Thursday, through our discussion on how a lot of science (like the sun rising) is not considered true, but instead probable, I found that I was given a new outlook on science.

So as far as Darwin goes, there is a reason I already owned the book. It was my overly ambitious goal in high school to read through as many "classics" as possible. On the Origin of Species is one of the few books I have placed on my "can never actually finish" list. However for the sake of this class I have been trying again and doing a bit better. When I think of Darwin, the witty words of David M. Bader's summarizing haiku always come to mind first:

Galapagos finch-

                                 the same beak as Aunt Enid's!

While reading On the Origin of Species, I could not shake Professor Grobstein's directive to us to read it as we would a romance, or any other novel. I felt so little of the words on the page held romance in and of themselves, that, instead, the true romance was somewhat hidden beneath the work, hinted at by Darwin's throwaway comments about his research, life, and contemporaries. Every so often his pure joy for his subject would come tumbling out: "We see these beautiful co-adaptations most plainly in the woodpecker and missletoe [sic]; and only a little less plainly... in the plumed seed which is wafted by the gentlest breeze; in short, we see beautiful adaptations everywhere and in every part of the organic world" (p132).

I am so pleased to meet all of you and I am looking forward to working with you this semester.  I've been at Bryn Mawr as a faculty member for nearly 15 years.  My area of research is experimental molecular physics which involves beam machines and lasers.  Technology and its developments have driven the acquisition of new knowledge in my area.  I couldn't do my work without it.  The infusion of new tools also creates a lot of the fun of doing science.  In my work I've enjoyed immensely the combination of manipulating stuff and imagining stuff as the most rewarding mode of doing science.  The manipulation of stuff is where technology has perhaps had its biggest impact.  New technologies extend our senses and capacities, while also, focusing, i

Only one week in and a garden of new thoughts are germinating already!  One of the paths I’m curious about is the role of evolution in determining what is POPULAR (the areas where we find agreement) in terms of literature or music or art etc.   We discussed how our diverse perspectives influence how we approach the summaries of our observations of life, where is that place where we come together? Why do we agree? How do we get there? How does “selection” work when it’s a matter of creativity as opposed to literal survival? Given that the universe is so large and constantly expanding, it would follow that there are infinite possibilities in terms of creativity. Why don’t we enjoy and pursue them all equally? 

In class on Thursday, we discussed how uncertainty is a large part of the scientific process. Often times experiments result in more questions than answers, which leads to more exploration. Creativity and different viewpoints are crucial for approaching problems and seeking a more complete understanding of a question. These are many positive outcomes of the uncertainty of science. The negative aspect to uncertainty is when science is used to make public policy. If these observations and beliefs aren’t certain, when is there enough evidence to be used to dictate what people can and can’t do? If the evidence can yield different interpretations, what makes one interpretation more valuable than another?