Joshua W.J. Brown is a Toronto-based Canadian writer and filmmaker whose work moves among memoir, systems, science, disability, place and cultural criticism. His recent work has appeared in Canadian Dimension. His poetry is forthcoming in The Wise Owl, with additional work accepted by White Rabbit.
About Joshua W.J. Brown
Joshua W.J. Brown is a Toronto-based Canadian writer and filmmaker whose work moves among memoir, systems, science, disability, place and cultural criticism. His recent work has appeared in Canadian Dimension. His poetry is forthcoming in The Wise Owl, with additional work accepted by White Rabbit.
Articles with Joshua W.J. Brown
COLD LIGHT: MECHANISM, WONDER, AND THE AESTHETICS OF BIOLUMINESCENCE
A memory of wanting to see the Pacific glow becomes a problem of method: what happens to wonder when a luminous phenomenon is explained? This essay argues that scientific mechanism need not disenchant aesthetic experience. Marine bioluminescence is chemically specific, biologically functional, and still capable of carrying symbolic force. The mistake is not using science in art; it is treating scientific vocabulary as prestige paint. When mechanism is respected rather than merely borrowed, luciferin, oxygen, neural control, disturbance, wavelength, and survival can deepen rather than diminish the imaginative field.