The Science of Ideas - Lucy Coats

I am an ignoramus as far as science is concerned.  I freely confess it.  My education consisted of Biology (to O-Level only), and given the fact that we had a maiden lady as teacher who had to call in another member of staff to teach us basic human reproduction, it is surprising that I know anything about biology at all.  My all-girls school didn't teach physics or chemistry.  In that particular place, it wasn't seen as necessary to educate females in those sorts of things.  I've felt cross about it ever since - and rather ashamed at the scientific lacunae in my brain. 

Why should I care?  My particular sort of work as a writer means I don't really need physics or chemistry - they don't often crop up in mythology or fantasy novels. I guess it's because lately I've begun to find the whole physics thing fascinating, and I know I'm missing stuff.  I also (strangely enough) find it incredibly stimulating to my imagination. Take the recent BBC2 Horizon special: The Hunt for Higgs.  Among other things, there was a lot of talk about matter and anti-matter, and how they shouldn't exist in the same space.  Right away, my 'writing' brain clicked into life.  Perhaps they don't, I thought.  Perhaps they exist in the same space, but a different timeframe, a nanosecond apart. (Scientists, please note, the Nobel Prize is mine - unless someone's already come up with that one! *joke*) I've found lots of other examples too, where my brain goes off exploring possibilities.

What I particularly like about the more arcane sort of physics and science I heard discussed both on that programme, and on Stephen Hawking's Brave New World (C4) is that it is partly about imagining the unimaginable.  There's a lot of 'what if' about it all - and surely, as writers, that's what we do too?  I wouldn't dream of imposing my own 'what if' ideas on a scientist, but maybe there is a case for someone like me, with no pre-conceived notions, having a place in a lab experiment. I'd love to get a small group of open-minded writers and physics scientists together for a discussion and see what happened! 

For me, it's nice to embark on a new intellectual challenge midway through my life, and I'm thankful to have a fellow ABBA author (Anne Rooney, who is MUCH cleverer than me) to guide my first faltering footsteps along the path with her wonderful Story of Physics.  I'll leave you with the following serendipitous link between science and literature. Quarks, particles discovered in the last half of the twentieth century, are named after a passage in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. I find that very encouraging. Perhaps we're not so far apart after all!