BIOME - Virtual Models and Metaphors

I visit the Biome sims in Second Life®, two sims owned by the North Michigan University. The sims, according to their creator Clowey Greenwood in her blog, are "dedicated to the study of biodiversity, classification of living things, ecology and bioenergetics."

Here, literally, is a tree of life - a gigantic tree model with rooms that showcase living things at various branches of the evolutionary tree. There is a room of plants where I sit among leaning blue wisteria and crepe myrtle, a room with red spotted fungi on another branch, and yet on another level a room with animals. I study a classification chart of animals located on the wall in the animals room, notice how the subclass of monotremes branches off from mammals - while I sit next to one of two known monotremes - a duckbill platypus.

To the northeast of the Tree of Life is a giant model of a microscope, with lenses that look down on a drop of pond water. I walk into the human-size droplet of pond water - greet larger-than-life models of arcella, amoeba, parameciom, spirogyra and euglena. There is also on the grounds of the main Biome sim, among other builds, a giant pop bottle exhibiting a "closed system habitat." And on the second of the Biome sims, I wander among trees and wetlands, intended I am told, to exhibit the ecosystems of the Michigan Great Lakes region - and their changes through the seasons.

Among those interested in science and the philosophy of science, there has been much interest in the use of models and metaphors in science. At one level, the investigation seems to explore the utility of models - how they allow us to learn, remember, analyze and predict. On other levels, some of the interest is in fundamental questions of how we come to know what we know, human perception and persuasion.

More obvious than other "builds" I have visited in Second Life, the Biome sims, with the Tree of Life and giant microscope, exhibit models and metaphors in science. By their very use of models, they also provide a discourse on the use of such models and metaphors. Perhaps this is not surprising in a virtual world, where everything is indeed replica, model, metaphor.

The focus on this higher level of discourse may have some uses - while models and metaphors may allow us to learn and extend our knowledge of the natural world - they may also cloud our ability to perceive alternate views of the same world. Understanding that we are indeed seeing the world through models and metaphors and their potential limits may allow us wider capacity for alternate perspectives.

This is what I think about as I stand within the droplet of water with the paramecium and spirogyra within the lenses of the giant thirty-meter tall microscope at Biome - the curious manner in which we might learn about looking at how we look at things - from other eyes, other lenses.