Biology of Wonder_ Aliveness, Feeling and the Metamorphosis of Science ( PDFDrive.com )

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CHAPTER 1:
The Desire for Life
I am the toad. / And carry the diamond.
— Gertrud Kolmar
ave you ever looked into a toad’s eyes? They are big and round, like
dark waters. But their iris, which centers around the black pupil’s
opening, has a golden color.
Don’t be afraid. Just come closer. Look right into the toad’s eyes.
Then you will see how these tiny jewels expand into space. Their interior
consists of myriads of shiny folds, microscopic canyons and mountains,
above which sparkle lost stars. The toad responds to our gaze with the
night’s sky.
You say that this isn’t important? That a toad is an animal and our
view of it is uninteresting? Maybe you even find it ugly? Wait a moment.
Look again. Look again, as I have done. You’ll see that something
responds to your gaze. That something exists on the other side, which is
no “thing,” no mere matter. Something that lives.
I tried for many university semesters to find out what that something
is. I tried to find out about life. As a student I dissected frogs in old-style
German seminar rooms. I cloned bacteria in crowded labs. I sieved
minuscule worms from the muddy flats of the German sea shores to find
out about the living. I even graduated with a diploma. But nonetheless I
always felt as if something was lacking. As if we, the researchers, the
modern scientists, were overlooking something crucial when we
observed plants and animals. As if we were blind to what had sparked
our interest in living beings in the first place. As if callously disrupting
the integrity of a complex apparatus would reveal its secrets and reveal
that they are no secrets after all, but “in reality” only links in a
mechanical chain reaction.
I have spent my life searching for life’s nameless “something.” I have
finally found it — because science itself has rediscovered it after
centuries in which researchers were determined to ignore what they
could have seen all the time, were it not for their self-imposed duty to be