2 minute read
KEEPING THE PAST ALIVE
Biology is a historical science. Our job is to understand life, and life is the product of a long process of evolution that happened in the past, mainly the distant past, beyond our direct observation. Even when we study the process as it unfolds in the present, as with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, many mysteries remain: Why was there so little evolution in 2020? What are the effects of past infections on how sick people became? And where exactly did the virus come from?
As this issue of OUR DNA makes clear, the past is the key to the future. Understanding the future consequences of climate change that our faculty study today only makes sense in the context of the history of climate, encoded in the soils, tree rings, and the satellite images we have had the wisdom to collect. The power of archiving history as it happens is exemplified by Vicky Rowntree's careful cataloging and sharing of images of the Southern Right Whale. Much like the history taken and understood by a good physician, this record situates what is happening today in the context of the past.
The people of the School of Biological Sciences also link the past with the future. The faculty, with what they hope is seasoned wisdom, bridge past knowledge to present questions. Through collaboration across academic generations, our students carry this history into the future, building the future of science and of society.
Meditations on history often converge on two famous quotations. George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Biology does not repeat itself. The climate has been very warm before, but not in quite the way it is now. The lessons of the past are rather more complicated, a set of principles and guideposts rather than a simple prediction. Careful application of these principles is at the heart of the critical thinking we seek to convey to our students.
More ominously, George Orwell stated, "Who controls the past controls the future." Orwell meant this in the political realm, about the power of historical myths and those who create them. Education is about a very different sort of power, the power to understand, to predict, and intuit the future of an open society. As William Faulkner said, "the past is never dead. It's not even past." Biology, and the study of biology, is about keeping the past alive.
Sincerely,
