![]() ![]() “When you practice with other people, you’ll find that others think about things that never occurred to you - and I noticed that everyone was smiling,” Laws said. “There’s a relationship, a coincidence, associations that make them stick in your head,” he said.Īllowing audience members to practice all three skills by observing videos of animals in nature or each other - and verbalizing out loud what they saw or were reminded of - the exercise revealed bonuses beyond more accurate observation. Using “It reminds me of,” when observing nature builds connections, something our brains are hard-wired to form and retain. For a scientist, questions are the real goal. We either make something up or we deflect it to (a subject) where we can still sound like authoritarians. They get the big paycheck, especially us men. “We admire people who have answers to every question. Every detail will stay with you longer.”Īsking questions is “intentional curiosity” and a second practice that leads to observational mastery - but it takes overcoming social bias to achieve it, Laws said. Turns out, if we look with our mouths, our brains register it more. “Say out loud the specific details of what you’re observing. Laws said a three-step approach and a few extra tips open the path to seeing nature in richer detail. Laws, whose full name often leads people to believe he’s a descendant of environmentalist John Muir, said, “I’m named after a different John Muir, but I inherited his love for the biodiversity of the planet.” Through the eyes of his young daughter he recently had “a revolution in my thinking about how to observe nature.” They’re as different from each other as we are.” Even the birds in my books are lies because no two birds look exactly the same. “Once birders “nail” (label) a bird, they’ve nailed themselves. “And looking hard at something isn’t worthwhile,” Laws said. Mind-wandering, labeling, or tossing out distracting elements will often lead to faded details or missing something entirely. Turns out, there’s prescreening our brains are doing, even before the data comes in.” To demonstrate, he displayed a sentence on a large screen and asked people to count the “f’s.” Most people saw only the words that began with the letter, but missed the word “of.” ![]() And harder yet to believe how often they look, but fail to see, when using their eyes.Īdmitting our visual bias, Laws said, “The science of how we observe and remember has taught us our ability isn’t as good as we think.” Laws is a research associate of the California Academy of Science in San Francisco and author/illustrator of “The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds,” “The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada,” and other publications.īut even with evidence from an expert, it’s hard for most people to believe they can draw. Science Cafes feature experts explaining the science behind everyday items and phenomena, from coffee to pianos to computer animation to honey bees. “Anyone can draw and everyone can try a new way of observing,” the naturalist and wildlife illustrator/educator told a Science Cafe audience at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center. By Lou Fancher on ApSan Jose Mercury News
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