As a high-school chemist I got very good at explosions. But what fascinated me more than the flashes and bangs was the chemistry of water, in all its infinite subtlety, and if there was one experiment I loved doing, it was the EDTA titration to estimate the hardness of water. I could almost hear the contented sounds of chelation, as it happened.
I do wonder, though, if water is liquid, how it comes to be that we’re estimating a quality called hardness. Moh’s hardness scale for minerals makes sense – but hardness in water is of the same order of allusiveness as the hardness of radiation. What is it about the more penetrating kinds of radiation that makes them ‘hard’? (Grant, don’t answer that).
THE OED reveals that the adjective ‘hard’ was first applied to water in 1660, when Francis Brooke wrote in Le Blanc’s World surveyed or his famous voyages and travailes that ‘The water was sharp and hard, but nothing brackish’, but it wasn’t until William Saunders’ A treatise on the chemical history of some of the most celebrated mineral waters of 1805 that hardness became associated with mineral content:
- A very hard water, curdling soap, and possessing a large portion of selenite and earthy carbonats.
A clue comes in Claridge’s Cold-water cure of 1869, that
- Hard water makes the skin rough, but soft water, on the contrary, renders it smooth.
Hard things, then, are rough and tough, exacting, unyielding, penetrating. Soft things are smooth, delicate, vague, yielding.
One could take this further, to the description of some sciences as ‘hard’, others as ‘soft’. From a long way off, one might say that physical sciences are hard, and biological sciences, soft.
The dichotomy goes further, however, for within biology, modern molecular and cell biology is sometimes referred to as ‘hard’, with ecology and evolution as ‘soft’.
I can’t help thinking that there is an implied value judgement here, stemming from the invasion of traditional biology by physicists that resulted in the birth of molecular biology in the 1950s. The result was a kind of replacement theology in which molecular biology was seen as an exact science (in other words, ‘hard’) whereas traditional biological pastimes were seen as so much vague stamp collecting (that is, ‘soft’).
Such prejudice carries on to the present day. It is the ‘hard’ biology, big on expensive laboratories and machines that go ping, that gets the funding and the grants, whereas ‘soft’ biology is usually seen as dispensible, and because it is much cheaper, it is thought that it can probably survive on nothing at all, and even then, it wouldn’t matter if it disappeared entirely — except, of course, when some big anniversary comes around, and biologists, hard or soft, come out and celebrate the legacy of Mr Darwin. But he’s a historical figure, and poses no threat.
There is also the wilful misperception that ‘soft’ biology is concerned with the collection of data – stamp collecting – when in fact it consists of mature disciplines, rich in subtle theory and concept. It is the ‘hard’ biology, concerned with the characterization of molecules and their various interactions, that is the stamp-collecting, concerned with a corpus of knowledge that is as yet too incomplete to be summarized in terms of over-arching concepts.
In the end, what amuses me is that my own field of study, palaeontology, is concerned with rocks and bones – and teeth, which are made of enamel, the hardest substance known to be produced by living organisms (it notches up a five on Moh’s scale) – and yet is disparaged by molecular types as ‘soft’ biology. Whereas that biology that chases evanescent and most definitely squishy genes, proteins and cells, is known as ‘hard’ biology. There’s no justice.
There’s no justice.
No.
THERE’S JUST ME.
That’s what worries me.
I agree with your sentiments, Henry (no need to divide to conquer, let live in a biological paradise!), but I will continue your bifurcation process anyway. Ecology (my field) is often split into theoretical (= maths, presumably hard) and empirical (= splashing about in the mud, i.e., soft) fields.
The trick in any field is to ask a really good question. It doesn’t necessarily need to be answered with the most expensive, convoluted tools available, but if it elucidates an unknown mechanism, or highlights a wide ranging generality, it’s a cool, worthy result.
Luckily Henry is in exactly the right position to do something about this! Exert your considerable
frameinfluence over other Eds at Nature, and insist that Evolutionary Ecology is currently hugely underrepresented in high impact journals.Once this is accomplished, let me know and I’ll send you a pile of
shoddymanuscripts to publish post-haste, and offer to buy you a pint. Ta very much.Exert your considerable influence over other Eds at Nature, and insist that Evolutionary Ecology is currently hugely underrepresented in high impact journals.
Believe me, I’m trying (don’t answer that, Grant).
Aha can you be talking about science at last? An interesting blog entry Dr Gee. Meanhile, up here in deepest Norfolk I need an ark, or a canoe, so much rain! There must be a scientific angle in there somewhere?
Mrs Gee – I suggest you
walkwadeswim down to the shed, find that coffee table I haven’t quite finished making, and turn it upside down. That might make a decent life-raft, and could probably fit you, the children and the 27 pets.I like this – very interesting – and have now spent the last 5 mins trying to think of other things that can be hard and soft and so far have come up with eggs, rabbit droppings, wood, and ions – although interestingly (well to me , anyway) the ions in hard water are not particularly soft as far as I remember…
“other things that can be hard and soft”
Drinks.
Wares.
Currency.
News.
Rain.
Heads.
Cheese.
Sauce.