Readings and Courses

February 2024 - Reflections on my Coursera course

I did a Coursera course ("Introduction to Biology: Ecology" from Rice University) during my school holidays from December 2023-January 2024 as a way to explore an area of Biology my IB Biology HL syllabus hadn't covered yet, and looking back now it really gave me a lot of knowledge in my favorite Biology specialization. 

I wasn't exactly expecting a lot from an online course that is mostly free-- however, I was really pleasantly surprised. Dr. Scott Solomon was an engaging teacher, and I never found myself dozing off or being disinterested in the class modules. Personally, the thing I appreciated most about this course was this recurring theme of interconnectedness and systems, which is, in my opinion, what the area of Ecology is all about. We started from organism ecology and would zoom out to population ecology, community ecology, landscape ecology, and even global ecology. Although Ecology is technically a sub-field under Biology, it doesn't lack any depth and breadth, and the course allowed me to better understand how organisms and wider populations may all influence one another. The course also included many opportunities for me to interact with my fellow students, for example through writing tasks where we could comment on each other's ideas on how Ecology could be seen in our respective home countries, and overall really widened my scope of knowledge regarding how nothing in an ecosystem happens in a vacuum-- any changes will always indirectly impact other things.

Throughout the course, I felt like I was being transported to ecosystems across the globe. We started with Humboldt's climb on Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador to learn about longitude and latitude, then went to oceans to learn about the species distribution of barnacles, to mangrove island to learn about island biogeography, Yellowstone to understand keystone species, the Amazon Rainforest to learn about habitat fragmentation, experienced fires in the Udzungawa mountains, and many more. Having lived in Singapore for most of my life, I wasn't sure how much those ecosystems would resonate with me, but I began making a lot of connections between ecosystems I was more familiar with and the ones Dr. Solomon taught us about. The mangroves here in Singapore are quite similar to the ones elsewhere, and I particularly enjoyed Dr. Solomon's talk about reforesting in the Rice University campus and seeing how Singapore has made similar efforts in recent years. 

I finished this course with an even deeper appreciation for our Earth and the ecosystems around us, and a lot more critical and systems thinking regarding environmental stewardship and how we as humans are also part of the wider ecosystem. When I have the time, I plan to do the other two courses offered by Rice (Conservation Biology and Biodiversity), which might prepare me for my IB Biology internal assessment in a month or so!

March 2024 - Reflections on Why Fish Don't Exist

I read Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller a while ago, and since I used it for my IB Theory of Knowledge Internal Assessment I've been thinking about it quite a lot recently. 

From the front cover and the blurb, it doesn't exactly come across as a science-focused book. It's Miller's personal memoir which includes a biography of taxonomist David Starr Jordan, but it is a prose novel and clearly not a research paper or textbook. But that's exactly what drew me to this book-- scientists should, ideally, have a life outside of their research and academia, and I wanted to see how that could pan out for me in the future through reading this.

I like having my opinions challenged, which is exactly what this book did. I started off thinking of Jordan as a kindred soul who also had an innate fascination with nature and trying to understand the animals around him through higher education and investigation, however as the book progressed, I found myself increasingly frustrated with him. He just felt like the quintissential academic who, out of wanting to make a name for himself, started using his research for motives other than scientific progress. What initially was admiration on my part regarding how much effort and time he put into researching fish and taxonomy quickly turned into confusion as he started using his taxonomic findings to justify and spread his ideas of eugenics. 

Frustration aside, this book really allowed me to reflect on the true purpose of Biology-- making some kind of order out of disorder. Entropy is the idea of how everything in existence tends towards chaos and disorder, and Biology tries its hardest to categorize things, to make sense of things that don't make much sense. It seems like a pointless endeavor when I phrase it like that, but I think that this is one of the most unique qualities of Biology: there is so much nuance to every theory and concept, and no lack of new discoveries made every single day. I may not personally agree with Jordan's moral standings, but Lulu Miller's book helped me better understand what it means to be an individual in science, and understand how we cannot let our personal pride and alterior motives get in the way of contributing in an ethical and meaningful way to new knowledge. In a way, this book is a cautionary tale-- keep thinking of your "why", and you'll be a lot less likely to go down the path Jordan ended up falling into.