A common question I encounter when I reveal to someone that I study both infectious diseases and classical languages (Latin and Ancient Greek) is “why?”. The inquiry comes in the context of trying to understand how knowing Latin or Ancient Greek could possibly be useful to someone who works in a scientific field. I’ve been asked if I want to learn Latin (and later Greek) as part of preparation for medical school or because many scientific names and terms are derived from one of these languages.
The underlying belief behind these questions is that I am only studying languages because they must be useful to my scientific career. I have never studied the classics with any intention of gleaning directly applicable information for my work in the sciences. Nevertheless, I have increasingly found that my continued engagement with classical studies as an academic discipline has imbued me with many of the basic skills I use as a scientist. So, here are the skills I learned as a classicist that I now use as I build my scientific career:
How to craft a data driven argument
In college, I was frequently tasked with writing lab reports based on data generated from an in-class exercise. These lab reports were meant to prepare us to write data driven arguments in our future lives, yet I struggled to see how they were useful. Many of the experiments done in class had known “correct” answers. Because the intended conclusion was obvious, I struggled to learn how to draw conclusions from the data independent of the outcome I knew I was supposed to get. It wasn’t until I started working on my senior thesis in Classics that I understood how a data driven argument was meant to be constructed.
I started by investigating the influence of social media on modern perceptions of the gorgon Medusa. I recorded information posted about her on Reddit and TikTok. I wanted to know what the average internet denizen thought about Medusa (what she looked like, what her story was, etc.) and how they were using her in their own narratives (as a sex object, a lesbian, etc). Concurrently, I also researched her representation in the ancient sources, asking the same questions of the Ancient Greek and Latin texts which I was asking of the social media sources. At the end of the research phase, I was inundated with data, examples of different narratives and uses, both modern and ancient, of the character. For the first time, I had to write without having a known answer in mind.
As I incorporated more data into the study, I found that the argument I had originally crafted, namely that social media users in their reception of Medusa would either reproduce her exactly as she was in the ancient sources or would reject her ancient narrative entirely and craft something new, was constantly becoming more nuanced. I found that the modern receptions were defined not by strict adherence or divergence from the ancient sources, but rather by recrafting of the narrative of a few favorite sources (mostly Ovid) to create a Medusa whose narrative and iconography was influenced as much by the ancient sources as by previous receptions (e.g. by feminists of the 1960s) and the receptions of other users online. Completing the work showed me how to draw conclusions from the data and to guard against assumptions that might cause me to dismiss evidence.
How to engage with an academic speaker
When I started attending scientific seminars in graduate school, I quickly realized that, although I would listen to the talk, when Q&A rolled around, I struggled to ask questions. The complex questions that the professors, post docs, and senior graduate students asked made me believe that I had to be a partial expert in order to ask a question.
Simultaneously, I also started attending seminars hosted by the Classical Studies department. The contrast between the two venues was stark. Whereas the scientific seminars tended to focus on presenting data and defending conclusions, many of the Classical Studies presentations were more like workshops. The speaker would read the essay they had prepared for the occasion, sometimes accompanied by slides, with the expectation that the audience would contribute to the revision of their ideas. Even though my Classics research interests are focused on Classical reception (the study of how concepts and texts from the Classical Greco-Roman world are used and adapted), I found that I was still able to contribute to discussions about history and medieval studies.
By drawing on my existing knowledge of classical texts and principles, I was able to practice the sort of lateral thinking that allows an entomologist to stand up at a neuroscience lecture to ask about the function of a particular gene. This has helped me gain confidence that I can perform similar associations the next time I am sitting in a biology department seminar.
How to explain scientific concepts beyond an academic context
A major barrier to successful communication is a language barrier between the speaker (typically a researcher or academic) and the audience, which may contain experts in the field, fellow academics in other disciplines, students or members of the public. Effective communication happens when you know your audience and tailor your presentation to foster understanding to that specific audience. This can be difficult after one spends years in a field and grows accustomed to the lexicon and speaking to a unified scientific audience.
In a broader sense, we can view the problem of academic communication as an extension of the issue of translation. In translation, the goal is to bridge a gap of understanding between groups of people who speak different languages. While translation is an exercise I frequently encounter in my Classics studies, I did not fully appreciate how useful the exercise would be for improving my science communication skills until I encountered a knowledge gap problem while I was working on a Greek composition project.
My narrative included an encounter with a horde of zombies, and I quickly realized when I got to that section of my writing that an Ancient Greek person would have had no idea what a zombie is. In order to complete my composition, I had to think concretely about what a zombie fundamentally is and what ideas already existed in my target language to convey that idea. Through this exercise I understood the importance of assessing the audience’s knowledge of my subject matter and using their knowledge base as a guiding lens through which to view presentation and communication.
Now that I’m a graduate student, I reflect on how studying in the humanities benefits me, as a researcher, in indirect but tangible ways. The narrative sold to and perpetuated by students, that only subjects which directly relate to their intended field of study are valuable, is false. My advice now? Go forth and learn widely - you never know what will prove useful in your future.