Look at Your Salvation
Robert Dawson
1 Peter 1:8-12
Writer David McCullough tacked a plaque above his desk that reads: ‘‘Look at your Fish.’’ It comes from a story about the value of seeing, a story he shared in an interview with ‘‘The Paris Review.’’
It’s taken from a test that Louis Agassiz, a nineteenth-century Harvard professor of zoology and geology, gave every new student. He would take an odorous old fish out of a jar, place it in a tin pan in front of the student and say, ‘‘Look at your fish.’’ Then Agassiz would leave.
When he came back, he would ask the student what he’d observed. Not much would be the answer given most often and Agassiz would say it again, ‘‘Look at your fish.’’ The student would be encouraged to draw the fish but couldn’t use any tools for the examination, just hands and eyes. This could go on for days.
One Student, Samuel Scudder, who later became a famous entomologist and expert on grasshoppers, left us the best account of the ‘‘ordeal with the fish.’’ After several days of ‘‘looking at the fish’’ he still could not see whatever it was Agassiz wanted him to see. But, he said, ‘‘I see how little I saw before.’’ Scudder had a brainstorm and announced it to his teacher the next morning.
Scudder said, ‘‘Paired organs, the same on both sides.’’ ‘‘Of course! Of course!’’ Agassiz said, very pleased. So, Scudder, thinking the assignment was over, naturally asked what he should do next, and Agassiz said, ‘‘Look at your fish.’’
McCullough said, ‘‘I love that story and have used it often when teaching classes on writing, because seeing is so important in this work. Insight, more often than not, comes from looking at what’s been on the table all along, in front of everybody, rather than from discovering something new. Seeing is as much the job of an historian as it is of a poet or a painter. That’s Dickens’s great admonition to all writers, ‘Make me see.’’’ [Timothy Willard, ‘‘Understanding the Value of Chasing Beauty,’’ The E ...
Robert Dawson
1 Peter 1:8-12
Writer David McCullough tacked a plaque above his desk that reads: ‘‘Look at your Fish.’’ It comes from a story about the value of seeing, a story he shared in an interview with ‘‘The Paris Review.’’
It’s taken from a test that Louis Agassiz, a nineteenth-century Harvard professor of zoology and geology, gave every new student. He would take an odorous old fish out of a jar, place it in a tin pan in front of the student and say, ‘‘Look at your fish.’’ Then Agassiz would leave.
When he came back, he would ask the student what he’d observed. Not much would be the answer given most often and Agassiz would say it again, ‘‘Look at your fish.’’ The student would be encouraged to draw the fish but couldn’t use any tools for the examination, just hands and eyes. This could go on for days.
One Student, Samuel Scudder, who later became a famous entomologist and expert on grasshoppers, left us the best account of the ‘‘ordeal with the fish.’’ After several days of ‘‘looking at the fish’’ he still could not see whatever it was Agassiz wanted him to see. But, he said, ‘‘I see how little I saw before.’’ Scudder had a brainstorm and announced it to his teacher the next morning.
Scudder said, ‘‘Paired organs, the same on both sides.’’ ‘‘Of course! Of course!’’ Agassiz said, very pleased. So, Scudder, thinking the assignment was over, naturally asked what he should do next, and Agassiz said, ‘‘Look at your fish.’’
McCullough said, ‘‘I love that story and have used it often when teaching classes on writing, because seeing is so important in this work. Insight, more often than not, comes from looking at what’s been on the table all along, in front of everybody, rather than from discovering something new. Seeing is as much the job of an historian as it is of a poet or a painter. That’s Dickens’s great admonition to all writers, ‘Make me see.’’’ [Timothy Willard, ‘‘Understanding the Value of Chasing Beauty,’’ The E ...
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