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[Jun. 7th, 2007|12:22 am] |
For a while now in the lab I've been working with a compound called diformylferrocene. I need it for the chemistry I do, it can't be bought, and it takes two days and maybe eight (inefficient) man hours for me to make it. This makes it a commodity of great value in the Diaconescu microcosm, and as such it is the object of perhaps more introspection than it deserves.
It is an interesting compound in its own right. Born from a mixture of opaque orange goop, it blooms into a deep, artificial red. It forms rocky, brittle, crystals that are almost black. It isn't toxic (I hope), but it is an "aromatic" compound-- which means one thing in the arcane world of Chemistry, but in real life means that it probably smells weird. It does, too! At first whiff I got the impression of mint, Play-Doh, and boing. I gathered the group to try for a scientific consensus. Colin thought it smelled like chocolate. Erin thought it smelled funny but couldn't say what it brought to mind. Nate just wrinkled his nose.
After a few minutes of monkey talk, the novelty of categorizing this strange new fruit wore off and we went back to work. I would still stick my nose over the vial before taking some out, would hold it up to the light and shake it a little, but no longer gave it any serious thought. After I while though, something started to happen. Y'see diformylferrocene is, like I said, a deep artificial red-- like cherry candy. And I found, after a few weeks of working with it regularly, that it had started to smell like cherry. Every time I caught the smell, the cherry was more distinct, more dominant. After a while it stopped smelling like mint or Play-Doh or any other weird thing-- it became cherry. It always *was* cherry. Diformylferrocene smells like cherry!
What's going on here? How can a thing that has nothing to do with actual cherries, and didn't smell like them at first, get that association in my brain? It's a testament to the flexability of the human brain, and actually it happens all the time without anyone noticing. Have you ever eaten Mexican watermelon candy? It doesn't taste anything like watermelon, does it? But then again, neither does a watermelon Jolly Rancher, if you think about it. Side by side, a real watermelon and a watermelon Jolly Rancher are about as similar as a miniature pony and a firetruck.
But! Every candy in the United States that says "watermelon" on it tastes like every other candy that says "watermelon" on it. And it's pink! Watermelons are also pink. The fact that watermelon candy tastes like nothing so much as Watermelon Candy makes little difference to your bendy, bendy, brain. Without thinking about it, your brain suspends its sensory disbelief. After all-- it no make monkey sick, it taste sweet. Why complain?
Well, it's like Democritus said-- "By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color: but in reality atoms and void." It's an innocuous statement when the atoms are out of man's grasp. Sensations are caused by atoms-- but if you don't know anything about the atoms, who's to care? A pear is a pear is a pear. 'convention' assigns roughly one sensation to one object, and the sensations are produced mostly by the natural world. Here intuition works well.
The litany of progress, however, has delivered to us in the modern world a new kind of control. We can now manipulate the tastes and smells of every thing. This isn't bad, it's merely more complex. To get a good picture of this new world we need some new ideas, or rather, we have to be more conscious of our old ones. If 'watermelon' doesn't always mean a big green fruit with juicy pink pulp, then when we say 'watermelon' there is a little hint of ambiguity. The word is muddied, and slowly the idea will be too.
Of course this is natural-- a language is a big festering pool of words-- we always have to muck around to make ourselves clear. We can say "watermelon candy" is one flavor, and "watermelon" is another-- no harm done, you might say. Imagine, though, if watermelons were to disappear all of a sudden. 'Watermelon candy' could then just be called 'watermelon,' with no apparent ambiguity. The words are in competition, then.
In a hundred years we might call the green fleshy thing 'watermelon fruit' and leave the unmodified noun to the pink candy. An object, a taste, a unique sensation, would then have been eradicated. Worse than eradicated! Replaced-- not even remembered as an absence. This is all very paranoid and silly, but it bears remembering. I doubt man would, even if removed from nature entirely, ever forget completely the taste of "real" food, but stranger things have happened, and it would be a shame to lose the variety. |
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