“Experiment” and “experience” have the same root in the Latin word experiri, meaning “try”, which makes sense up to a point. One lunchtime on my recent trip to China, I experienced fried chicken’s feet. I say “experience” but, in truth, I was the unwitting subject of my son, Ed’s experiment. The difference between an experiment and an experience lies in the active and passive partners. The experiment, as traditionally understood, involves someone actively imposing their will on something else. An experience is a more equal process. Ed bought the fried chicken’s feet, but I was under no obligation to partake.
Fried chicken’s feet on sale at a Wuhan street food market. The photograph at the top of the post shows Mellbreak reflected in Crummock Water.
This post is actually about fieldwork rather than chicken’s feet, but the same principles apply. Just before I headed off to China, I spent a day in the field in the Lake District, blessed by some wonderful views to distant fells. These days are all about experience. We have an itinerary but, beyond that, we do not have an agenda and we certainly do not intervene beyond collecting some measurements and samples. For this particular set of sites, we have a strong idea of what to expect but that just makes the exceptions that much more intriguing. I wrote about one of these in “Golden-brown”; another occurred in the River Cocker just downstream from Crummock Water where a dense growth of a red alga smothered Fontinalis antipyretica. I see this same alga growing on rocks in late autumn and winter in the River Ehen but here I found it in spring growing on other plants. Checking back through my field notes, I see that this is not a totally unique record, but it is an outlier from my general experience and deserves further investigation. The previous post (“Acid trip …”) is the result of the happy conjunction of two people comparing their observations of the same site at different times.
Audouinella hermainii growing on Fontinalis antipyretica in the River Cocker, just downstream from Crummock Water, April 2023. Scale bar: 20 micrometres (= 1/50th of a millimetre).
I read recently that the word “experiment” was first used in the 17th century in a religious context. Most prayer, at the time, followed fixed formulae but a movement towards less formalised prayer, where the worshipper saw the encounter with the Divine in a more open-ended way. The experience of God, in other words, is too easily drowned out by the words of the supplicant. Prayer, in this 17th century manifestation, became about listening. And, before I meander too far off topic, fieldwork, too, can be about listening to the stories nature has to tell us rather than imposing our own interpretations on what we see before us. Or, to come from another angle, seeing the exceptions to a general rule we have been taught introduces seeds of doubt around which alternative explanations may crystallise. “There’s a crack in everything”, as Leonard Cohen wrote. “That’s where the light gets in”.
I touched on this subject in “Form without function?”. Geoffrey Fryer, the subject of that post, was a proponent of what a modern social scientist would refer to as “qualitative research”. He wrote about this at length in his valedictory essay in the journal Freshwater Biology: Quantitative and qualitative: numbers and reality in the study of living organisms. He was not arguing that qualitative and quantitative approaches were alternatives but was concerned that modern scientists rush too quickly into measurements without first spending time observing the organism or system they were studying. It is about experiencing rather than dominating nature.
Great Gable dominating the skyline behind Wastwater, April 2023.
Of course, experiments are an essential part of the scientific method. The problem with observation is that you can establish patterns, but it is much harder to determine causes. For this, the ecologist has to bring unruly nature under strict control, evoking Yahweh’s mandate to Adam in Genesis 1:28: “…Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground”. We can gain much from experiments but, at the same time, stripping out much of the complexity that is an inevitable part of most ecosystems can, on occasion, give misleading results. Experiments need to work in tandem with experience if robust inferences and profound insights are to be achieved.
And what of chicken’s feet? I’m still not a convert without actively disliking them. There is a lot of skin, cartilage and bone on a chicken’s foot. But that raises a whole other set of issues. My experience was conditioned by a lifetime in the West where we prioritise the taste of soft tender meat over the diverse textures that other parts of the bird may offer. Our experiences are partly the result of our conditioning (more on this in “On fieldwork …”). Having started the post by praising “experience”, I end worrying whether I can trust my experiences. But going into nature equipped with this awareness does, at least, mean that I’m forever conscious of “falsifiability” which, if nothing else, lends a sense of anticipation to even the most mundane sampling trip.
Reference
Fryer, G. (1987). Quantitative and qualitative: numbers and reality in the study of living organisms. Freshwater Biology 17: 177-189.
A street food market in Wuhan with, bottom, a wok containing “long bao” (soup dumplings).
Some other highlights from this week:
Wrote this whilst listening to: John Haycock. Intriguing mixture of West African kora and electronica.
Currently reading: Cuddy by Benjamin Myers. Excellent novel about the influence of St Cuthbert in the north of England.
Cultural highlight: Choral evensong at Durham Cathedral.
Culinary highlight: A Rachel Roddy recipe that involved cutting fresh asparagus stalks into very fine strips, then sautéing these slowly in butter, onions and wild garlic and serving with home-made tagilatelli.
microscopesandmonsters 