To Know a Fly

                                                                       Vincent Gaston Dethier, USA (1915 – 1993)
Summary in English

to know fly

The essay "To Know a Fly" is about the beauty of scientific discoveries and investigations. According to essayist, a property conducted experiment is a beautiful thing. It is a victory of conquest or inquiry. An experiment is a scientific way of asking nature a question. Experiment depends on the act of faith and proper observation. However, some scientists commit scientific crimes. They involve into foolish and wrong investigation so that they would bring the hasty conclusion. This is due to the lack of proper experimental control and confusion of correlation with cause and effect in the name of scientific experiment.
Scientific experiment is not a game for a disorderly mind. It is based on the cause and effect where one can get meaning by reason. Writer talks about commonly committed scientific sin that is the lack of proper experimental control. He gives some example of such scientific sin/crime.
A man makes an experiment on a Flea to justify whether it listens through its ears. When flea jumps up, the man begins to amputate different organs of flea. At last, he amputates the hind legs of the flea so that it couldn't jump. The foolish man does not think of the amputation of all legs rather he becomes happy and assumes that it only listens through the legs.
The next scientific crime is confusing with cause and effect. For example; an apartment house saves the gentle immediately after an earthquake. He says that the building got collapsed because he pulled down the window shade.
There are many types of sugarcane: beet sugar, milk sugar grape sugar, each is chemically different and fly tastes sweet differently. The fly goes there because of the sweetness of sugar but does not go to other artificial sweetness. In this sense, flies accept materials that taste sweet to us. Similarly, when the flies see the food, they fly around it. Then, they stretch their feet and land on the food. It is said that when they know the food, they fly around it and lower down their feet. When the food is tasty, they land on it. They know the tastiness from their feet. This proves that a fly is more sensitive than man. A starving fly is ten million times more sensitive than man. Even a fly reacts differently in case of different things and tastes.
Therefore, the writer talks about an experiment about flies. He says that the experiments about flies began few decades ago. In short, this essay shows that scientists should arrive at conclusion through scientific processes, experiments and observation.