viz.

Image Credit: Drew Berry/The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

Via The New York Times

On Monday, the science writer Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide, skyped into my “Literature and Biology” classroom. During his virtual visit, Lehrer shared many smart, engaging ideas (bonus: he’s also rather comely!). However, the take-away was that innovation often comes from those on the periphery of a field, which makes for a compelling, practical reason for openness and conversation across disciplines.

I thought of Lehrer’s comments the next day when reading “Where Cinema and Biology Meet” in this week’s “Science” section of the Times. While the article and accompanying video provide a fascinating overview of molecular animation as an emergent visualization tool, I want to focus on what I’ll call the tsk-tsk-ing section of the piece, which airs some scientists' doubts about the value of these animations for "actual scientific research," as they can "quickly veer into fiction."

Image Credit: BioVisions, "The Inner Life of the Cell"

This skepticism resonated with Lehrer’s take on Carl Sagan, whom one of my students named as a favorite science writer—i.e., the mistaken idea that Sagan's lucidity and popularity somehow threw his scientific credentials into doubt, and that, more generally, accessibility is inherently incompatible with accuracy and rigor. By turning attention to a more synthetic, experiential model of cellular processes, these short films help us to see in a way that supplements rather than supplants other approaches to visualization. And if they simultaneously inspire the general public through an immersive, "Hollywood," experience, all the better.

Ultimately, these animations support Lehrer's claim that moments of insight often come from the unexpected influences that jolt us out of our disciplinary tunnel vision. For Darwin, it might have been the volume of Milton's collected works that accompanied him on his Beagle voyage; for Robert Lue, a Harvard cell biologist quoted in the article, it might be the Death Star scene in the original Star Wars.