Constructive : Synthesis

It’s interesting you mention Finnish because it is in the Ural-Altaic language group along with my first language, Turkish. I say first, and should probably also say last.

Tuesday, on a balcony overlooking the Golden Horn, I was told the story of a Parisian philosopher, who wrote most of his works in French, was also fluent in German, and who eventually could only communicate in French, then German, and then finally in Romanian (the language of his childhood) as he progressed through the stages of Alzheimer’s. This makes sense given the fMRI studies showing that the cluster of neurons associated with one’s native language is spatially distinct from that of languages learned later in life.

And right there a question arises — do you guys feel yourselves visualizing the abstract or the concrete?

The short answer is the concrete. Which is why I chose noumena over phenomena.

The longer answer is that we like to think we are studying the actual object (in this case the ribosome) however, it is true that in fact we are studying the phenomenon, the appearance of this object to our senses (which in the case of smFRET is our sight). The phenomenon we are observing may directly report on the ribosome, or may be an artifact of the system. This is a question that Scott fields a lot during lectures on his work. Perhaps he will have more to say.

More so, sounds like in plenty of cases we're only going to be able to visualize the (indirect) effects these structures generate on their immediate environment and on other local structures with which they interact ... rather than, say, (direct) observation of the structures themselves.

Yes, our senses evolved to directly observe food and predators and mates. Objects typically (except perhaps if you consider a virus to be a predator) larger than the cell. Therefore, all observation on a subcellular scale is indirect in the sense that we require tools to mediate the observation.

So, yes, we are model guided from beginning to end. And that is one of the goals of this project: to push the boundaries of biological observation. To add a new sense to the toolbox. We have well-established indirect methods of seeing things smaller than light. I’m hoping through this collaboration we can also start to hear things smaller than light.

So that's where the friction — the constructive friction — will lie. In the language of research (and questions about research) rubbing up against the language of composition (and questions about composition) as the work progresses.

Yes, and before friction comes contact. The earliest enzymology lesson I learned was that in order to react, two objects first must bind. Corpora non agunt nisi ligata. In fact, one of the principle functions of an enzyme is to accelerate the process of bringing objects together. Thus by extension, it is not surprising that it is an enzyme, the ribosome, that is bringing us together for (I would argue rather than friction) a constructive reaction, a synthesis.