\n<\/p>\n
This episode was made possible by the support of Yakult and produced independently by Scientific American\u2019s board of editors.<\/p>\n
Michael Benson: So the snowflakes were a different story altogether. [Flips to a page in his book Nanocosmos.] So there\u2019s the classic one.<\/p>\n
You know, I lived in Ottawa, Ontario, for six years.<\/p>\n
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n
Kendra Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: Three years of continuous snowflake production [Laughs] because it\u2019s\u2014because really it, the winter, lasts for half the year.<\/p>\n
I worked out a methodology to get snowflakes into the vacuum chamber of the electron microscope using liquid nitrogen. I had this kind of cryopod, which was used to take DNA samples around Canada. So you can capture the flakes and keep them at -200 or something degrees, something incredibly cold \u2026 and then you have a shot at getting it into the vacuum chamber.<\/p>\n
Ice in general doesn\u2019t like a vacuum, and it doesn\u2019t like being hit by electron beams.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Benson: You know, it, it sublimates, and it melts. But you have about three minutes to capture a snowflake. And so we worked out a methodology to get high-quality SEM [scanning electron microscope] images of, of snowflakes. [Flips to another page of the book.] That\u2019s a close view of the center of this thing. You can see why no two snowflakes are, are alike when you look with a microscope like this because they\u2019re so complex, you know? [Points to an image in Nanocosmos.] This one has a bisected tine.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And when I first saw it I thought, \u201cOh, it\u2019s too bad it\u2019s not perfect. I can\u2019t really use this one.\u201d And then a minute later I said, \u201cWait a second, this is how it looks. Use this,\u201d you know? And actually, I think it\u2019s beautiful.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: It is beautiful.<\/p>\n
Benson: Mm.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American\u2019s Science Quickly, I\u2019m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman.<\/p>\n
Radiolarians are single-celled organisms that live in water and are [typically] invisible to the naked eye. But under microscope these creatures take on an almost glassinelike quality.<\/p>\n
Their beauty, along with that of other tiny creatures, and some extreme close-up images of lunar rocks are the subject of Michael Benson\u2019s recently released book, Nanocosmos: Journeys in Electron Space. In it he uses a specific type of microscope, a scanning electron microscope, often used by scientists for research, to create beautiful art that he hopes will help instill a sense of wonder and awe in the world.<\/p>\n
And just a note to all of you listeners, Michael and I were together to look through his stunning new book, and we made a video version of this podcast so that you can look, too. Head over to our YouTube to see snowflakes, radiolarians and moon rocks in all of their visual glory.<\/p>\n
We have Michael Benson here with us today. Thank you so much for coming.<\/p>\n
Benson: Thank you very much for inviting me. I\u2019m, I\u2019m really looking forward to talking about my project.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Your earlier books, you know, Planetfall and Cosmigraphics, really focused on sort of the beauty and the enormity of space, and this is a little bit the opposite. Like, you spent seven years in a tiny room in Canada …<\/p>\n
Benson: [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Looking at tiny things. Why did you decide to switch it up?<\/p>\n
Benson: A lot of people don\u2019t even remember the name Buckminster Fuller.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: He was a prominent futurist, very famous in the mid-20th century. And he was being interviewed, apparently, by a young journalist, a little bit nervous talking to the great man towards the end of his life, and the journalist said, \u201cYou\u2019ve spent a career prognosticating about colonies in space and our position in space. Does it ever bother you that you haven\u2019t actually been to space?\u201d And Fuller looked at him and said. \u201cMy God, man, where do you think we are?\u201d<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Benson: And my point is that, actually, this is not that different from the other work I\u2019ve been doing; it\u2019s just that it\u2019s at a different scale. It\u2019s all about space and time, looking at how we try to understand our position and space and time using images, but I also write.<\/p>\n
And with the electron microscope work it was finally having a chance to look at phenomena here on this planet. I wanted to look at natural design at submillimeter scales, so smaller than a grain of salt.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: So huge, basically [Laughs].<\/p>\n
Benson: So huge, basically\u2014well, okay …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: I\u2019m kidding [Laughs].<\/p>\n
Benson: Well, no, it\u2019s huge if you\u2019re talking about, you know, atomic physics or something\u2014we\u2019re talking about large structures. That\u2019s true [Laughs]. And we are talking about atomic physics because the electron microscope uses the electron and not the photon to look at subjects.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that. What makes a scanning electron microscope so different from [a] conventional lens-based microscope?<\/p>\n
Benson: It\u2019s quite different. It\u2019s\u2014first of all it takes up most of a room. It uses electrons instead of photons to look at the subjects, which allows for a far more detailed, nuanced, accurate look at extremely high magnifications of subjects.<\/p>\n
From a very young age I was aware of electron micro\u2014microscopy images, invariably presented as belonging to scientific research. But I\u2019m an artist and a writer, and I\u2019m not a, I\u2019m not a scientist …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: Although I am very science-adjacent. I use scientific technologies to explore phenomenal reality for my purposes.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm …<\/p>\n
Benson: You know, which is, you know, more associated with the arts; it is not science.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: In what way is it art? Because I think when people think about taking an image of something or preparing a slide\u2014what are the choices you\u2019re making that make it different from, say, what people think of when they think of science?<\/p>\n
Benson: So scientific imaging is about research and empirical data acquisition. I am positioning my work as belonging to the history of, of the image.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: The, the history of photography\u2014although, in this case, it\u2019s [micrography].<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: But it looks like photography, and it\u2019s printed like photography. And in fact, I approach it like photography, even\u2014although it\u2019s using a million-dollar piece of scientific research equipment that never leaves a single room\u2014you know, a room …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: You can\u2019t take it around [Laughs] and take photos with it. You have to bring the subjects to it.<\/p>\n
There is a real learning curve learning how to use that kind of instrument …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And I have been fortunate in having the confidence of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Gatineau, Qu\u00e9bec.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: I had a training period, and then they let me loose on the instrument.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a very complex set of procedures just to get a sample ready for the SEM.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: SEM: scanning electron microscope.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And that\u2019s all exactly the same as what any scientist would do, exactly the same, you know?<\/p>\n
Art has a freer hand than science. Art does not have to justify itself and prove things. Art is about sublimity\u2014it can be\u2014and about evoking wonder and about triggering aesthetic and emotional responses. And art is also, to quote something Brian Eno said recently\u2014I don\u2019t think he invented this, but it\u2019s an interesting point\u2014that art is, in some ways, how adults play.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And furthermore, play is not wasting time\u2014play, in children, is about figuring out their place in the universe in a way, to simplify.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: And in my case this work is, in part, an extension of that impulse. You know, how to continue producing in myself this sense of wonder about our place in the universe, about the universe, you know, the phenomenal reality. And I\u2019m also fascinated by frontiers.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: One of the sets of images that open up the book are of these lunar moon rocks, and it\u2019s interesting looking at them because they do\u2014they look like mountainscapes to me.<\/p>\n
Benson: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: What are we looking at? [Gestures at a page in Nanocosmos.]<\/p>\n
Benson: So it\u2019s lunar impact glass, and it was a piece of ejecta, as they call it, you know, from a macrometeorite impact millions of years ago the Apollo 16 astronauts just kind of casually noticed lying on the lunar surface when they were doing something else and raked up\u2014they had these rakes, sample rakes\u2014and just threw in their sample bag and brought back to Earth.<\/p>\n
Every single lunar image in the book\u2014there aren\u2019t that many … [Flips to another page.]<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: This is another lunar mountain range. They all came from the same piece of impact glass, which I just found marvelously ravaged and geological and, and, you know, landscapelike.<\/p>\n
This is all fracturing … [Points to an image in the book.]<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: From, from the impact, and\u2014and I guess from the impact of the glass when it hit the surface. And then, and then, you know, there was\u2014there were millions of years of exposure to space that resulted in various forms of weathering, let\u2019s say.<\/p>\n
[Flips to another page.] Here you have micrometeorite impacts.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: So they have\u2014you can see, you know, characteristic lines radiating out, just like in macro lunar craters that we can see with a\u2014through a telescope.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah, that\u2019s really cool.<\/p>\n
Benson: Yeah. I very consciously wanted to make landscapes, lunar landscapes, on Earth. They look like Utah or Arizona slick rock country, you know? [Laughs.] They look very geological, and they are geological. It looks like something you could climb, you know? [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah, it does.<\/p>\n
Can I ask a very silly question?<\/p>\n
Benson: Absolutely.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Did you lick it?<\/p>\n
Benson: No.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Benson: Lick it\u2014why?<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: I don\u2019t know. There\u2019s, like, a whole trend where\u2014or a thing where people, like, feel compelled to, like, lick rocks, and you got [Laughs] …<\/p>\n
Benson: Oh, my God, these are Apollo samples. No chance would I, you know\u2014and, and, and in fact, I wasn\u2019t allowed to coat them. Because most samples you put in the electron microscope are coated with a molecule-thin layer of [a conductive material such as] platinum so that they don\u2019t charge.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And that\u2019s complicated to explain. But you have an electron beam hitting the subject, you know, and if it\u2019s not grounded with, with that coating, it can charge, and, and so on. And so I had issues with\u2014I, of course, I couldn\u2019t do that; these are priceless samples.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And so I couldn\u2019t do that, so I had to figure out ways of imaging, imaging them without them\u2014their charging, and nobody who listens to this podcast is gonna sit through an explanation of how I did that …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Benson: But, but I did manage to do that. But no, I did not lick them. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.] I mean …<\/p>\n
Benson: It\u2019s a good question, though. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Many of the images, like the image of the weevil in a flowering plant\u2014I really like that one …<\/p>\n
Benson: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Become almost a world unto themselves …<\/p>\n
Benson: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Because they\u2019re taken so closely. They\u2019re obviously so beautiful, but is there also, like, a scientific benefit to taking pictures like these?<\/p>\n
Benson: Whether or not there\u2019s a scientific benefit is beyond me, but as I said earlier I am fascinated by frontiers, wherever they may be. I define a frontier as where, where what we know or think we know meets what we know we don\u2019t know …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: You know? And, and, and there\u2019s this sort of hazy zone in the sciences, where, where all of this research is taking place, and I am fascinated by that, but I\u2019m not a scientist …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Right.<\/p>\n
Benson: I go there as an artist, looking for my kind of \u201cdiscovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
You know, with those images of insects in plants, you know, I, I did have the benefit of being able to speak to and actually get loans from entomologists …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: At the Museum of Nature. So I was asking things like, \u201cWell, what does that thing do?\u201d And then I would typically get an answer [such as], \u201cWell, we believe it\u2019s for this,\u201d and I realize I\u2019m at the frontier, you know?<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: \u201cWe believe it may be for this,\u201d you know? So that\u2019s, you know, that\u2019s an interesting place.<\/p>\n
[Gestures to a page in Nanocosmos.] So this is a flowering plant from the Adriatic, and when I collected it\u2014the Croatian side of the Adriatic Sea …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And when I collected it\u2014I mean, this is incredibly small. It\u2019s about\u2014the, the entire plant, let\u2019s check [Flips to another page], the entire plant is eight millimeters wide, so that\u2019s, you know, under a centimeter wide. And when I collected this thing with tweezers and put it in ethanol, I noticed that there was this weevil in it.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And then they both, they both went in the ethanol. And so what you\u2019re seeing is this kind of\u2014I mean, very, very close to how it would look in actual nature, you know?<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: If someone actually paid attention to look.<\/p>\n
Benson: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Because\u2014I mean, because it\u2019s so small, it just feels like a thing that most of us would overlook.<\/p>\n
Benson: Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, and also, who really looks at all those really tiny flowers? You just kind of trundle along, you know? [Laughs.] But I\u2014one of the reasons why I really had a lot of fun with this project is it changed my way of looking at\u2014my way of being in nature, you know?<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: I mean, I was\u2014of course, it was a little bit predatory [Laughs] when I was collecting samples.<\/p>\n
[Flips through pages of Nanocosmos.] And there\u2019s another one that\u2019s similar to this that is even more ambitious in a way. In fact, I think it\u2019s the single most complex mosaic I did in the whole book\u2014all of these are mosaic images, by the way; they\u2019re comprised of hundreds of individual scans. [Points to an image.] This is the one.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Oh.<\/p>\n
Benson: Yeah, so that is\u2014that\u2019s from a\u2014that\u2019s an Ontario plant and a foxglove aphid in it.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Oh, yeah. [Points to a part of the image.] Right there.<\/p>\n
Benson: Right there, yeah. And that one took about three weeks of continuous work to assemble because the, the individual SEM frame was something like this. [Turns the page to a closer view and indicates the size of the frame with his hands.]<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: You know? And then there\u2019s also a depth-of-field question. So, I mean, not to get all nuts and bolts on you here, but, you know, sometimes I had to do focus-stacking, get multiple scans of one part of the, of the subject in order to stack them in Photoshop and make sure everything was in focus, and then, you know, build a complex mosaic. So, yeah.<\/p>\n
And this is\u2014this has some elements of\u2014you know that famous painting with the tiger in the jungle [Laughs] …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: There\u2019s a little bit of that going on.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Art isn\u2019t prescriptive, but, like, what do you hope that people get from seeing these images?<\/p>\n
Benson: I don\u2019t know. I mean, you know, for example, those\u2014the weevil surrounded by flowering plants was consciously modeled after 16th- and 17th-century Dutch still-life painting, where you\u2019d see all the\u2014you could see all these flowers and insects, all in a perfect arrangement, and just kind of, you know, life in miniature.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: It\u2019s about triggering an aesthetic response. It\u2019s about showing worlds that you can\u2019t see with the naked eye, but we have these tools now to see them.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: See these worlds, you know? That, that also is all bound to this question of the frontier, of course.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Radiolarians, there\u2019re these, like, you know, microscopic, basically, organisms …<\/p>\n
Benson: They are microscopic.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: That live in the ocean.<\/p>\n
Benson: Yep.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: And\u2014but they\u2019re so beautiful. They\u2019re almost, like, glassine in structure …<\/p>\n
Benson: They are.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: But we would never be able to know about them without, you know, advancements in imaging, functionally.<\/p>\n
Benson: Well, it\u2019s interesting\u2014radiolarians are specifically a, a, a central focus of the 19th-century German marine biologist Ernst Haeckel. He\u2019s best known to the layperson as the author of a book that, in English, the title is Art Forms in Nature, which is really the first arts-science crossover illustrated book bestseller ever. And it\u2019s still in print.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: It\u2019s incredible, you know? So he brought, let\u2019s say, the message about radiolarians to the public in the late 19th century …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: Discovered many of them. His work impacted design and architecture and art. He was using an optical microscope\u2014the, the electron microscope had not been invented yet.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: He would\u2019ve been envious, I think. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Benson: I could look at radiolarians with a level of particularity that he could only dream of. But he did produce extraordinary work about radiolarians and many other organisms: diatoms, dinoflagellates \u2026 all kinds of things.<\/p>\n
[Flips to a page in Nanocosmos.] So this is a radiolarian from the equatorial Pacific. It\u2019s, it\u2019s 300 microns wide, which means 0.3 millimeters; it\u2019s extremely small. But look at the complexity there. And, you know, when it was fully intact and not partly damaged, it had a whole shell of this kind of latticework going on there [gestures to an image in the book]. And, you know, there\u2014I write in the book about what all of these things are, we think, are doing, or at least to an extent: you know, what the\u2014those radiating spines are all about. It\u2019s partly about flotation in the water column. Yeah, so.<\/p>\n
But the, the beauty of it is breathtaking to me. [Flips the page.] Here\u2019s a closer …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Closer.<\/p>\n
Benson: View.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: Yeah. I mean, it\u2019s\u2014there\u2019s nothing like radiolarians anywhere else in nature that I\u2019ve seen. I mean, in, in, in …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: Biological nature that I\u2019ve seen. They\u2019re, they\u2019re quite specific.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: And I think if we pop over here [Turns to another page] …<\/p>\n
Benson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so these are, these are diatoms.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And diatoms are another class of single-celled organism, and, and they tend to be much more sleek, as you can see here. And interestingly about diatoms, diatoms produce oxygen in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere\u2026<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: But they\u2019re tiny, little things, you know? It\u2019s just that there are billions of them. You have, you know, you have diatom blooms …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: You see these long tendrils\u2014you can see it from space, you know\u2014of kind of greenish blooms in the water.<\/p>\n
And all of the, the shells are actually glass\u2014I mean, they\u2019re silica, just like with radiolarians, by the way. The radiolarians are also\u2014they distill silica from seawater and produce their, their shells from that. And under an optical microscope they look like glass.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: In an SEM you see the surface texture of the, of the glass, you know?<\/p>\n
But the reason they do that\u2014I mean, the reason that they have to be clear\u2014is that they\u2019re like petri dishes. [Laughs.] They have, they have symbiotic photosynthesis going on: algae living inside, producing energy.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Oh, that\u2019s …<\/p>\n
Benson: For them, yeah.<\/p>\n
[Looking at another page.] That\u2019s, that\u2019s a marine, marine diatom. Like a pillbox, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: Yeah. I mean, these\u2014this just blows, blows me away. I mean, there, there\u2019s an element of Islamic architecture, somehow, in here. [Turns the page.] This is a close view. I mean, this could be something in Istanbul, you know?<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: Flip it upside\u2014flip it the other way, and it, and it could be the top of a building, you know, connected to a mosque or something.<\/p>\n
[Flips back to the previous page.] Yeah, and so, you know, again, you know, what you have here, this is almost literally a petri dish. Look at it\u2014it\u2019s the same shape [laughs]. It\u2019s a little bit more beautiful …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: [Points to part of the image on the page]\u2014yeah, it\u2019s almost, like, got lacing in there.<\/p>\n
Benson: Yep, yep.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: [Flips to another page.] And then we\u2019re gonna bounce forward again.<\/p>\n
Benson: Yep, so that\u2019s a dinoflagellate, and, and we were talking about them earlier. I mean, they are so strange. They are so beautiful to me.<\/p>\n
You have\u2014usually, you have this sort of equatorial groove [Points to part of the image on the page] where one of the flagella coils around. And then you\u2019ve got the\u2014this, you know, polar opening here, where another flagella extends. They spin for stability, like a spacecraft might. [Laughs.] And then they\u2019re propelled at the other end by this\u2014another flagella, which shoots them forward. And they\u2019re just amazing things, you know. And we don\u2019t know what, what this is all about. What are these guys up to?<\/p>\n
You know, there\u2014I think that there\u2019s a tendency to think that, \u201cWell, we\u2019re multicellular creatures, so a single cell must be a very simple thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: You know, \u201c\u2019Cause we are complex, and we are made of many cells.\u201d Well, it\u2019s not so simple. I mean, the single-celled organisms that have managed to survive and compete with each other and prosper in the sea are\u2014have just as much evolutionary history as we do. I mean, you know, four point something billion years, right?<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: Or three point something, yeah. I really should know that, but we don\u2019t, we don\u2019t know that\u2014nobody knows that for sure. In any case …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: It\u2019s been a while. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Benson: [Laughs.] It\u2019s been a long time. It\u2019s been a long, it\u2019s been a long time.<\/p>\n
So they\u2014they\u2019re very complex, and, you know, their survival strategies, their structural complexity is a result of the necessity to prosper, to go forth and prosper, you know?<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: They had the same marching orders as Adam and Eve, I think, you know: \u201cGo forth and prosper.\u201d That\u2019s, that\u2019s life\u2019s principle. [Laughs.] And, and so, you know, they\u2019re, they\u2019re very complex. They\u2014and also, I guess nobody who actually knows anything about cells would say, \u201cWell, a single cell is a, is a simple thing.\u201d It\u2019s\u2014we\u2014it\u2019s a mysterious, complex, magical, amazing thing, anyway, even in a multicellular organism like us.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: But, but the ones that are free-floating and competing with each other are particularly amazing.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: It feels like, in this moment, it\u2019s really easy to be very cynical about everything, that there\u2019s a lot of weight and heft going on in the world …<\/p>\n
Benson: Yeah, there is.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: But hearing you talk about this book and this project, it seems like it reinforced your sense of wonder and …<\/p>\n
Benson: Yes.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Joy.<\/p>\n
Benson: Yes, yes.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: And I know that, you know, people have many emotions in looking at art, but it does feel like that if you\u2014if people take away anything from your work, it should be kind of a sense of just how beautiful and weird and strange this world is.<\/p>\n
Benson: Yes, thank you. That\u2019s a great question. And you\u2019re right. There\u2019s also a spiritual element here. You know, I\u2019m not a believer in any kind of organized religion, but, but I\u2019m awestruck by where we are, you know, and, and, and, and, and so there is a, you know, there\u2019s an element of, you know\u2014I mean, okay, it sounds like a real cliche here\u2014but communing or trying to understand, you know, \u201cWhat is this? What is this project called life?\u201d You know?<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And you\u2019re right, you know, it\u2014we are living in times where, with a lot of help from algorithms and social media and certain toxic politicians and so forth, we are focusing on negative things, largely, and our\u2014on ourselves. The human race, like any life-form, probably, is focused on its own self, you know, largely. But my work has been to, in, in a sense, turn my back on\u2014at least the visual work\u2014on, on the, on the human race …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And look at nature, look at nonhuman phenomena.<\/p>\n
Now, I don\u2019t do that as a writer. I\u2019m fascinated by the history of, of technology and science, and I have an opening essay in the book where I, where I trace the history of the microscope …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Benson: So I\u2019m, you know, I\u2019m part of the human race, obviously. [Laughs.] I\u2019m not an alien. But, but I do …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Or at least that\u2019s what you want us to believe. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Benson: Well, maybe we\u2019re all, maybe we\u2019re all aliens; that\u2019s another question. But in any, in any case it is about drawing the human gaze, ideally, away from our political squabbles, our social media, our\u2014I don\u2019t know, you know, all of these things that are pretty banal, actually, when you look at it, or I would say so. And look at\u2014look out, look at where we are, look at the larger environment that actually produced us …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Benson: And look at creatures and organisms and phenomena that, that have developed alongside us for the same length of time as we have, you know?<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah. That feels like a good place to end this conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for joining us today.<\/p>\n
Benson: Thank you very much for allowing me to expound on [Laughs], on my work. I appreciate it very much.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Science Quickly is produced by me, Kendra Pierre-Louis, along with Fonda Mwangi and Jeff DelViscio\u2013who also edited this episode. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news. And don\u2019t forget to tune in next week when we take a deep dive into all things wild turkey.<\/p>\n
For Scientific American, this is Kendra Pierre-Louis.<\/p>\n
This episode was made possible by the support of Yakult and produced independently by Scientific American\u2019s board of editors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This episode was made possible by the support of Yakult and produced independently by Scientific American\u2019s board of editors. Michael Benson: So the snowflakes were a different story altogether. [Flips to a page in his book Nanocosmos.] So there\u2019s the classic one. You know, I lived in Ottawa, Ontario, for six years. On supporting science<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[19763,3694,19765,4831,3401,17080,19764,2150,12787],"class_list":{"0":"post-34885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-bensons","9":"tag-design","10":"tag-electron","11":"tag-explores","12":"tag-michael","13":"tag-microscopy","14":"tag-nanocosmos","15":"tag-natural","16":"tag-scanning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}