{"id":2222,"date":"2007-02-16T09:17:17","date_gmt":"2007-02-16T14:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.5\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=2222"},"modified":"2017-07-18T18:31:03","modified_gmt":"2017-07-18T23:31:03","slug":"two-modes-of-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/garden-essays\/two-modes-of-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Modes of Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was reading Monty Don’s My Roots: A Decade in the Garden<\/i> last night and I came across a couple of passages that irked me.<\/p>\n

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“This is why I have little time for gardens that are merely a collection of plants…A culture of technique–almost always male-dominated–where the garden almost became a laboratory superseded the true spirit of gardens which is feminine, intuitive and full of guile. Gardening is no more a science than cooking is.” — p. 105<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As someone who loves science both in the garden and in the kitchen, I’m impatient with these gender stereotypes. I do believe that there are two types of people but the division here is not between men and women but between those whose hearts rule their heads (F-types) and whose heads rule their hearts (T-types). Monty Don is obviously an F-type, even though he is male and I’m decidedly a T-type<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A couple of pages later, Monty Don traces his aversion to science to his childhood walks.<\/p>\n

\n

“I never really really articulated it, but I think I thought that studying [flowers] would break the magic and reduce this intense, private world to the foolishness of rational intelligence. It was the difference between watching the butterfly bob and float until it disappeared and scrutinizing the same specimen pinned to a block” — p. 108<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If that’s how he wants to see the world, fine. But I resent the dig against the “foolishness” of rational intelligence. The underlying message is “Let’s all revel in ignorance.” The hippies said it in the 1960s and forty years later the religious fundamentalists have picked up the cry. And he continues.<\/p>\n

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“…I am still wary of those who categorize and measure with botanical fervour…The poetry slips through these cracks, and without poetry gardens and plants are reduced to something between a specimen and another chore to measure the day. The light does not get in.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I find it difficult to comprehend how anyone could be blind to the poetry in science. Science teaches us how to observe, how to really look at the world, to distinguish the differences between one butterfly an another, to wonder at the living processes within each organism and delve into interrelationships among them. Whether taking a micro or a macro view, science forces us to see the world with new eyes. F-types don’t have a monopoly on poetry. Science is infused with poetry. I think my experience of the world is all the richer for trying to understand it.<\/p>\n

I might as well say to an F-type, “Stop cluttering the joy of pure thought with sensual distractions.” I wouldn’t, though, because I know that people experience the world in different ways. That’s part of the wonder of the range of human experience. One mode is not superior to the other. Remember, it takes the separate vantage points of two different eyes to experience the world in three dimensions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Science is infused with poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[314],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5411,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222\/revisions\/5411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}