Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character by Jack Hitt. I picked up this book to check on the progress of DIY Biology but was more than delighted to find Ben Franklin and Ivory-Billed woodpecker as well - fun read !!
Amateurs are often wrong, crazy, fraudulent, or twisted. There is typically a pomposity among amateurs that, well, one just has to get used to. They are often nerds, if younger; cranks, if slightly mature; eccentric, if aged; and— it should be said— at just about any age they can be total jackasses. But these are just the characteristics of people obsessed with a new idea, following their bliss, in love (amo, amas, amat— amateur) with one true thing. One thing that marks the amateur, the best of them, is this talent for not seeing things according to the dominant paradigm.
Amateurs are more likely to see what is actually there because there’s no money, no power, no prestige (at least not immediately) attached to seeing anything else. Amateurs mainly just want to know.
On DIY Biology:
Any major plant humans love to consume— the banana, the ear of corn, the apple, the potato, the tomato, most hot peppers— were all long ago coaxed into becoming the now seemingly fixed bounty of nature we revere. But we made them, using slow-motion synthetic biology.
“Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.” - Freeman Dyson
On Astrophysics:
Whether we are sitting in the Department of Astrophysics at Cambridge or under the night sky of Stellafane, we’re all amateurs once we get out here. Even the alleged facts that a genius like Stephen Hawking is working with are highly provisional. As I wrote these sentences, for instance, I received an e-mail alert about a new study out of the University of Durham in England that “suggests that the conventional wisdom about the content of the Universe may be wrong.”
There is no fixed American meta-narrative, but there is this ebb and flow between Adamsian veneration of piety and Franklinian love of improvisation, between Calvinist certainty and Deist doubt, between head and heart, virtuocracy and meritocracy, good character and cunning action, between security and freedom, between professionalism and amateurism.
Amateurs are often wrong, crazy, fraudulent, or twisted. There is typically a pomposity among amateurs that, well, one just has to get used to. They are often nerds, if younger; cranks, if slightly mature; eccentric, if aged; and— it should be said— at just about any age they can be total jackasses. But these are just the characteristics of people obsessed with a new idea, following their bliss, in love (amo, amas, amat— amateur) with one true thing. One thing that marks the amateur, the best of them, is this talent for not seeing things according to the dominant paradigm.
Amateurs are more likely to see what is actually there because there’s no money, no power, no prestige (at least not immediately) attached to seeing anything else. Amateurs mainly just want to know.
On DIY Biology:
Any major plant humans love to consume— the banana, the ear of corn, the apple, the potato, the tomato, most hot peppers— were all long ago coaxed into becoming the now seemingly fixed bounty of nature we revere. But we made them, using slow-motion synthetic biology.
“Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.” - Freeman Dyson
On Astrophysics:
Whether we are sitting in the Department of Astrophysics at Cambridge or under the night sky of Stellafane, we’re all amateurs once we get out here. Even the alleged facts that a genius like Stephen Hawking is working with are highly provisional. As I wrote these sentences, for instance, I received an e-mail alert about a new study out of the University of Durham in England that “suggests that the conventional wisdom about the content of the Universe may be wrong.”
There is no fixed American meta-narrative, but there is this ebb and flow between Adamsian veneration of piety and Franklinian love of improvisation, between Calvinist certainty and Deist doubt, between head and heart, virtuocracy and meritocracy, good character and cunning action, between security and freedom, between professionalism and amateurism.
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