14 Apr 2024
It has started from one accident I have made by mistake. I simply forgot to go to a guidance for students to pre-enroll in the teacherās vocational training session. Since I have been enrolled in a teacherās training course, I was supposed to attend a guidance for joining a vocational training session happening a year after the guidance. But unfortunately, I just forgot it. I was just doing my tasks at the library of the university campus.
When I realised that I had a guidance, it was already late so I wrote an excuse letter to the office knowing that it wonāt probably be accepted. The result is Nope and nope. My family actually helped me a lot with shifting my graduation plan from the original one with having the vocational training in the next year.
The alternative plan and probably the most optimum one was for me to enter the graduate school at the same university Iām in right now, so that I can finish my teacherās training course there without paying much extra costs. And that affected my research plan decisively because now I have got only one option to go to my current university after my bachelarās degree.
To me at first my free choice was limited by my mistake, which was unavoidable, but at the same time it was to be adaptive to my ongoing situation. It sounds cool but essentially I just forgot to go to the guidance haha. As I attempted to be adaptive, I started looking at biology more seriously than maybe ever before. This is to say that whether my interests somehow reside in the realm of biology or not. I knew that it does but I had thought it is not the best place. This was my thought before coming back to Japan after one-year studying abroad at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, where I learned cognitive science. I went there with a mind that biology is not abstract enough to approach my interests.
Looking back my learning journey of cognitive science as well as other more abstract subjects potentially relevant to my interests such as politics and Indigenous studies, I can say that they were abstract, theoretical, applicable, rather direct, etcā¦. And this was true though I might have been thinking superficially. I am not saying that those research are not digging up enough, but they are taking a role in creating as many casese as possible for natural science to substantiate them.
So, what I am saying is that natural science is a place to face the reality probably most directly among any other fields of science. And thatās why tangibility comes very handy in biology. With this thought process Iām quite convinced that biology is a very hardcore practice of scientists, and I feel like āyep, Iām joining it.ā It doesnāt have to be true that a field Iām pursuing is the best one though I could be illuded to think like it to motivate myself. Everyone has a biased assumption somehow and not getting out of it, so let me do that too here. Well, at least I have got out of it once by learning other fields, then came back to biology haha whether it was consciously intentional or not.
The transition from cogs to bio started from here. The way I perceived lectures of biology changed thanks to my learning in other fields to some extent. Actually, software engineering helped me a lot as a hobby. So, my resolution of biology I would say has changed and so as my viewing āfilterā on biology as well like ants can represent humanā¦or the better way to say that is ants can demonstrate some components of human behaviours.
I think whether we can use one organism to study other does not only depends on how genetically distant they are. How conceptually close or distant they are is also important. What if ants are conceptually very similar to humans in a quite scary way, that might be a way to go. So, it is cruitially important that I always have in mind how ants or other organisms are conceptually close to humans. Iām searching some research articles in this context. And I can also email AC about this as well to start off our interactions.
My email will be likeā¦
Dear AC,
This is Yujiro Kisu, a 4th year student taking your Ecology class this semester. Iām the guy who got interested in your T-shirt last week.
I have been re-assessing how biology explains the nature of human bahaviours, for this is probably important for me to transition from coonceptual-thinking guy to a more tangible-thinking guy which Iām deemed to be. So, I would like to ask some question if you donāt mind.
What would you think makes one organismās behaviours conceptually similar enough to another one, so that we can understand one then explain another? I apologise for such an abstract question but I still have some doubts about how ants behaviours are fundamentally representing human social behaviours as well. Maybe in other words, would you be able to tell me your opinion on how we know what makes different organisms share the same nature of behaviours?
To some extent I am already contemplating this myself but I wanted to hear someoneās ideas with possibly more decisive descriptions.
Many thanks,
Yujiro Kisu