Science writing can be literature, too

In Transparent Stratagems, John Updike reinterprets poetically the article Transparent Animals by Sönke Johnsen, originally published in Scientific American. Updike focuses on the varying evolutionary stratagems that allow undersea creatures to survive. Being unseen by predators is key to sea survival; thus, many sea animals have evolved to have transparent bodies, vertical digestive systems that cast small shadows, and thin optic discs. 

Being unseen also allows predators to approach their prey or create ingenious traps. For instance, siphonophores, otherwise transparent, have organs shaped like tiny fish that attract predators who are subsequently engulfed and swallowed. 

The poem is permeated with a sense of tension and awe: the tension of the survival struggle and awe at the ingenuity of nature. These two organizing states move the reader from detailed descriptions of survival mechanisms to vivid illustrations of the everyday terror of the survival quest. 

Transparent Stratagems is a beautiful illustration of science writing as literature. As a science communication researcher, and a science reader and writer, I find this kind of scientific writing particularly exciting and potent. The poem does not compromise technical complexity for the sake of the literary; the poem is crisp and detailed in its descriptions. Yet, we are left with something more than just a story about undersea animals. It makes us see how we too are transparent at times. 

As a science communication researcher, and a science reader and writer, I find this kind of writing particularly exciting and potent

This poem inspired my own scientific poetry experiment on the mind-body problem. 

The mind-body problem is a fundamental question in philosophy and cognitive science that explores the relationship between the mind (mental processes, consciousness, thoughts) and the body (physical processes, the brain, the nervous system). The core issue is whether the mind and body are distinct and separate (dualism) or one and the same (physicalism or materialism).

Dualism, most famously proposed by René Descartes, argues that the mind is a non-physical entity, separate from the body, and interacts with it in some mysterious way. In contrast, materialism holds that mental states are fully explainable by physical processes in the brain.

This problem remains unresolved, as neither approach fully explains how subjective experiences (like emotions and thoughts) arise from physical processes or how the mind can influence the body. The official answer to how consciousness exists in the body is: Somehow.

VALERIA CERNEI