The Biology of Vocation

There was a time when, on this blog, I posted a couple of times a week about some new discovery from the natural world or about some oddity or creature feature that amazed me. That, after all, is who I am: a professional and professed tree hugger.

That crowd of former biology-receptive readers has wandered off elsewhere, so I don’t have so much to say about my private delight in the natural world, where even here on the back nine, I continue to marvel at what we learn and at what we still don’t know about the world of living things.

This study of the role of bioluminescence in deep sea sharks would have been something I would have researched  and offered in a summary editorial here at one point in the past. Some of these bio-musings would have gone on to become newspaper columns in the Floyd Press. Now, here’s a picture for you look at, and I won’t burden you with my oooohs and ahhhhs.

But I guess the point is that, coming from my reunion gathering just two days ago, I contrast my peculiar interests to those of so many of my classmates I spoke with. I don’t think I heard from anyone else who had found a profession in the natural sciences, and there were a whole bunch who had become engineers.

And let’s face it folks: engineers are wired differently.  I’m not saying they are weird, though some of course will be. They just see the world  through different lenses, and apparently each  had a passion early on that sent them into that profession. What? The power of measurement, the control over material bits, the beauty of design and implementation as a kind of industrial art?

And the language and perception that comes from that mechanico-technical point of view lets them see patterns (like the one on this chain shark) that others like me cannot see. And so, for those of us who have a more organic view of our shared ecology.

So, that’s all. Just thinking about where our passions and curiosities come from and the deep oceans or high mountains to which those early avocations drive us. And here we are, my age peers and I, looking back at that past through the fuzzy lens of baby-boomer eyes at how we came to be who and where we are today.