Dr. Alan Townsend on Emotion and Science

First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft celebrates creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.

In this episode, Mitzi talks to Dr. Alan Townsend about his new book, This Ordinary Stardust.

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From the episode:

Mitzi Rapkin: We have this stereotype in our society that if you’re scientific minded that maybe you can’t write emotional stuff.  I know you’ve written plenty of papers, but do you feel like there’s something about science and the curiosity of science that actually paves the way to writing in a way that we don’t naturally think of?

Alan Townsend: You know, I can’t speak for everyone. I think for me, the answer is yes. And one of the things that came together for me in writing the book, and again, not something I thought that thoroughly about in my younger days going through science; but I always loved to write and this kind of trope of, you know, science is impersonal and emotionless, and all these things, which is not true for those of us who practice it. We’re human beings. And you know, many of the best people I know who do science, are, they’re full of emotion around it, because they love it, right? They really care and so there’s that, you know, it’s certainly true that it’s a field, like many technical fields, that kind of drums out of you freer expression for how you write. There are formulaic ways and so, I mean, we joke about it in science all the time, that man, we could really write some of this stuff in more interesting ways, but we don’t. But what you said, I think is a big part of it. I mean, one of the things I think we don’t do very well within science and society is recognize what an extraordinary canvas for curiosity it is and it needs to be, and that that can lead to all kinds of good outcomes, including good writing. You know, we have a tendency, I think if someone is labeled as a really creative person, that their path should be elsewhere; it should be into creative writing, or it should be into the arts, or it should be into whatever, right, and kind of that path. And that’s not what science is about. And it’s so untrue. You know, I mean, science requires various kinds of technical understanding, of course, but at its core, it requires creativity, and creative people are among the best scientists out there, and they all also tend to be really good writers. So, I guess that’s how I think about it.

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Dr. Alan Townsend is a scientist, author and Dean of the Franke College of Forestry & Conservation at the University of Montana. His writing has appeared in multiple national venues, including The Washington Post and Scientific American. Alan’s nonfiction book is called This Ordinary Stardust.  He is a highly cited author of more than 140 peer reviewed articles, and received his bachelor’s degree from Amherst College, and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University.  He is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, a Google Science Communication Fellow and was featured in the Let Science Speak documentary film series.