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intrikate88I downloaded the Richard Feynman lectures on physics from the Six Easy Pieces selections (and several others, it was a giant folder, I don't remember everything, if you want them I can upload) and was listening to the first one on atoms and their movement on the drive to and from work today (I've got an hour commute each way, I have to make it productive somehow.)
I've always loved physics, and the weirder it gets, the better. But even the physics of the everyday is so simple and fascinating; I was working on my car tonight, and just knowing how a lever and circular motion can be used to lift an entire car with a minimum of effort is really quite amazing. Or knowing the chemical reactions that cause an engine to be more than a lump of metal. Or knowing about how hydraulic pressure controls a brake line. It's all cool, all stuff I like to know about.
Feynman was talking in the lecture about how physicists discover laws in a way that's different from chemists or biologists... they have to come up with ideas first, about how things work, and those ideas, if they are good, are shown to be accurate through the observation of phenomena in repeated examples. It's not a theory or science without those experiments, but that idea, the imagination of it comes first. Feynman gave the example of hypothesizing about the structure of molecules and how those ideas could be proven by chemical experiments, and later by electron microscopes.
I was thinking more of how Einstein discovered all the things he did- it all started with thought experiments, with a giant WHAT IF. What if you were moving at the speed of light... and you looked in a mirror. What if you were moving upwards in an elevator really fast and somebody shone a light in one side. What if you were moving at 99% of the speed of light and your fellow traveler was moving at 95%, how would you each experience time?
And it occurred to me that in some ways, physicists and fic writers aren't that different. When you write fanfiction, you look at that world you're writing about, and you say... what if? What if we saw what Rose did after she was left in the other universe? What if Donna somehow met Gene Hunt? What if Susan used the skills she learned while ruling Narnia in this world, during the war? And so we write out these situations, seeing if they stand up to the way the characters really behave, and if they account for the laws that govern the internal logic of these worlds.
Sometimes they're bad ideas. Sometimes the way we've imagined them doesn't work, the characters just don't fit into those situations and so the fic falls apart, or maybe we just get no reviews or everybody goes "eh, that wasn't plausible". But sometimes they're great ideas. When people read the fics, they get a better idea of the motivations guiding that character, they find it consistent: a theory of behavior has been set forth and the situational evidence observed confirms that the original idea is more than just imagination, it's a legitimate predictor of further behaviors. The theory settles in people's heads and becomes something that guides their understanding of how the world works, whether that be how an atom is going to jiggle (Feynman's technical term!) or how Amy sees Rory.
I think that, in the end, that need to go "hey, what if..." is what really defines my interest in probably everything, making it a little less odd that I love literature and fandom and also physics, interests which have greatly confused people who think those can't go together (or, alternatively, have made people pretty much fall in love with me, which is a bit odder).
So that is howa raven is like a writing desk a fic-writer is like a physicist.
I've always loved physics, and the weirder it gets, the better. But even the physics of the everyday is so simple and fascinating; I was working on my car tonight, and just knowing how a lever and circular motion can be used to lift an entire car with a minimum of effort is really quite amazing. Or knowing the chemical reactions that cause an engine to be more than a lump of metal. Or knowing about how hydraulic pressure controls a brake line. It's all cool, all stuff I like to know about.
Feynman was talking in the lecture about how physicists discover laws in a way that's different from chemists or biologists... they have to come up with ideas first, about how things work, and those ideas, if they are good, are shown to be accurate through the observation of phenomena in repeated examples. It's not a theory or science without those experiments, but that idea, the imagination of it comes first. Feynman gave the example of hypothesizing about the structure of molecules and how those ideas could be proven by chemical experiments, and later by electron microscopes.
I was thinking more of how Einstein discovered all the things he did- it all started with thought experiments, with a giant WHAT IF. What if you were moving at the speed of light... and you looked in a mirror. What if you were moving upwards in an elevator really fast and somebody shone a light in one side. What if you were moving at 99% of the speed of light and your fellow traveler was moving at 95%, how would you each experience time?
And it occurred to me that in some ways, physicists and fic writers aren't that different. When you write fanfiction, you look at that world you're writing about, and you say... what if? What if we saw what Rose did after she was left in the other universe? What if Donna somehow met Gene Hunt? What if Susan used the skills she learned while ruling Narnia in this world, during the war? And so we write out these situations, seeing if they stand up to the way the characters really behave, and if they account for the laws that govern the internal logic of these worlds.
Sometimes they're bad ideas. Sometimes the way we've imagined them doesn't work, the characters just don't fit into those situations and so the fic falls apart, or maybe we just get no reviews or everybody goes "eh, that wasn't plausible". But sometimes they're great ideas. When people read the fics, they get a better idea of the motivations guiding that character, they find it consistent: a theory of behavior has been set forth and the situational evidence observed confirms that the original idea is more than just imagination, it's a legitimate predictor of further behaviors. The theory settles in people's heads and becomes something that guides their understanding of how the world works, whether that be how an atom is going to jiggle (Feynman's technical term!) or how Amy sees Rory.
I think that, in the end, that need to go "hey, what if..." is what really defines my interest in probably everything, making it a little less odd that I love literature and fandom and also physics, interests which have greatly confused people who think those can't go together (or, alternatively, have made people pretty much fall in love with me, which is a bit odder).
So that is how
Tags:
- academic career maybe?,
- audiobook,
- baloney science,
- big bangs,
- black hole about to swallow the universe,
- characters: amy pond,
- crossovers rule everything,
- daydreaming,
- donna/gene shipping ftw,
- fandom,
- fic,
- mah learnings,
- narnia,
- science: astronomy,
- science: physics,
- skience rulez,
- susan,
- tardis,
- things that make me happyful,
- tuesday:what is it even for,
- tv: doctor who,
- writing
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-19 01:34 am (UTC)I like. So much, so much like! My brain feels like it makes a lot more sense now.
Someone keeps yelling "OH MY GOD!" as they play video games next door and it just floats right in here. uggghhhhh
no subject
Date: 2010-05-19 01:58 am (UTC)Also, your icon. ♥
Heyyyy i have a loud video game player here, too. Let us run away to our own little domestic haven together?
no subject
Date: 2010-05-19 12:32 pm (UTC)Kind of a cool point about thought experiments/what-ifs.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-19 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-19 01:37 pm (UTC)This: And so we write out these situations, seeing if they stand up to the way the characters really behave, and if they account for the laws that govern the internal logic of these worlds.
So wonderful. This is so close to how I see fic, like a series of experiments, a playful re-working of what we know is true and what isn't and what could be, under the right circumstances. A lot of it, for me, goes back to that willing suspension of disbelief thing, that you can stretch and shift the elements of the story and the plot and the settings around so long as that internal logic, that core of character truth (or, definitely, the 'laws' of that particular universe) remain in their right place. Done right, fic and canon can feed and enrich each other, because it gives you the wider lens that you crave, asks the unspoken questions.
You, as always, have really good thoughts on the nature of this mysterious fandom thing. :D
no subject
Date: 2010-05-20 01:33 am (UTC)Absolutely. I think that really any time you analyze a text you're constructing some form of secondary or derivative text in your head, and beginning an intertextual discourse, and whether it is fic or critical analysis, turns that first conceptualizing into an actual experiment that interacts in some way with the original text. And that plays out and spits out a concept that is a new way of looking at something. I think the most flattering thing a reviewer can say, and the most interesting facet of fic reading and writing, is "that's great, that just became my headcanon". Because that's a point at which the interpretation of the original text resonates to SUCH a degree that, in some way, it becomes an actual definition of how things work. Ideas take on lives on their own, whether that be to the next group of readers/tv watchers, or physicists.
(I think all that made sense? I don't know, I've rambled about some of it in papers before. But you [you awesome, lucky woman] are already courting PhD programs, so you can take it.)
no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 08:58 am (UTC)I'm very much with you on the idea of consistent characterisation, what is psychologically plausible for the character given the environment, past and present factors influencing behaviour and events.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-09 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-09 01:10 am (UTC)...I second the friending!
Date: 2011-06-30 04:22 am (UTC)I love your Gene/Donna fic, and now also your thoughts on science. :) Would you mind if I friended you?
-K
Re: ...I second the friending!
Date: 2011-06-30 11:49 am (UTC)Re: ...I second the friending!
Date: 2011-06-30 09:21 pm (UTC)