The Disappearing Spoon Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Artistic Elements
Summary:
Chapter 14 is mostly about how the people who had money were the ones who were making the discoveries in science. Kean discusses how science and wealth came hand in hand. Because science began to be expensive, only the rich people had the money to study science. Kean then elaborates on a claim that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe made about how double replacement reactions worked. What he claimed about the double replacement reactions was unbelievable, for he used an analogy of two marriages with laws of attraction. Kean also mentions Johann Dobereiner whose career benefitted from Goethe’s point.


In addition, the author then switches his attention to Robert Lowell. Lowell had very interesting episodes of madness like, for example, he once stuttered that he was the Virgin Mary while at a friend's house. However, it didn't stop there because he had another episode where he tried to make cars stop by spreading his arms. Despite his episodes, he was able to work in science; surprisingly, his best work came out of these episodes. There was no medication that he could have taken to stop these mad episodes, well that is before they found out lithium could help. Lithium was able to keep the episodes from occurring since it controlled the proteins that cause these episodes. Since he wasn't having his episodes anymore thanks to the  lithium, there was a change noticed in his work.

Reflection:
This chapter was quite interesting, especially because I can't believe that the discoveries in science were mostly made by people with money. I learned about how some scientists can benefit from the studies of other scientists. When Kewan talked about Lowell, it was kind of sad to hear about his episodes. I reacted with joy to hear that Lowell had actually been able to control his episodes through the use of lithium. Before reading this chapter, I wasn't aware of some of the struggles that people in science went though.

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