Threads of Time

Once in a while, you read a book that you don’t want to end. Quite often, such grieving is reserved for beautifully crafted novels with intricate characters who linger in your imagination long after you turn the last page. Seldom does this happen for a non-fiction book, let alone one on a seemingly morbid topic. In this regard, “The Emperor of all Maladies”, by Siddhartha Mukherjee is truly an exception. A “biography of cancer”, a history of humankind’s tryst with this ancient disease, is as human as it is technical, as ornate with literary beauty as it is with scientific insight.

As a cancer researcher myself, this book was an eye opener. It illuminated a gaping hole in my attempts to understand this disease—one that is epitomized by its history. Having read the book, now I find it frankly embarrassing that scientists like myself (and I know for a fact that this is true for a vast majority of my peers) are largely ignorant of the diverse and storied history of cancer research. This historical perspective is not only important for its anecdotal value or general knowledge, but I would argue is relevant to the very work we do.

Unlike many other fields of work, research is inherently creative. That means, it doesn’t move forward by following a rigid set of instructions and protocols, but its advancement is predicated on pushing the envelope, challenging dogmas. Therefore, in every step of the way, scientists are posed with choices about the questions they want to answer, the approaches they ought to take and the overall philosophy of their pursuit.

And this is precisely where an understanding of the evolving history of the field could be relevant. To locate of one’s research with reference to the evolving geography and history of the field, to help rationally chart the trajectory of future work. Often, scientists will have read a lot of papers in their narrow field of study, but a large-scale historical perspective adds another dimension to this knowledge. After all, humankind’s progress is intricately linked to our ability to document our mistakes and successes over generations and learn from them.

In the biomedical sciences especially, there is additional merit to educating young scientists in the socio-political landscape of the field. To that effect, perhaps books like these could be taught in universities to graduate students and young scientists. In this era of free-flowing information, the demarcations between disciplines will only get blurred over time. Certainly, such well-researched books (“Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari is another that comes to mind) have been written with a keen rational outlook and lend themselves readily to a science classroom.

Reality is complex, but patterns emerge at different scales of space and time. History helps us read and identify those patterns and learn from them. Ultimately, it is the backdrop in which the reality of our present is being staged. It would serve us well to map our own ideas and understanding to this rich and complex tapestry woven by those who came before us.