What We See, and What We Put Into Words

 On a foggy night in Kamakura, followed by a humid rainy morning, I found myself thinking about newspapers, television news, and the difficult work of filling blank space. Some days, the news seems thin, yet journalists still have to find something, gather facts, and turn them into words. In a way, pathology is not so different. A pathologist does not simply look into a microscope and offer impressions. The real work lies in noticing what matters, understanding what it means, and putting it into language. AI may help organize information, but the first act of seeing meaning in what lies before us still belongs to human beings.

 

Last night, Kamakura was wrapped in dense fog.
And this morning, rain has been falling since early in the day.

The seasonal rain front is stretching across the Japanese archipelago, bringing weather that feels like an early hint of the rainy season. It is terribly humid.

There are days when I read the newspaper and feel that there is hardly anything I want to read.
No major incidents, no particularly striking topics, and yet the pages are dutifully filled with words.

When I see such pages, I think how difficult the work of a newspaper reporter must be. They have to find something, go out and report on it, and then turn it into words to fill the blank space.

I sometimes think the same thing when watching television news.
A news anchor, with a perfectly serious expression, reads out a topic that makes me wonder whether this is really something that needs to be broadcast over the public airwaves as news.

Whether it is radio or television, empty time has to be filled with sound or images.
Filling empty space, after all, must be hard work.

The work of a pathologist has something similar about it.

Pathological diagnosis is not like a newspaper article or a news program in the sense that it exists to fill pages or airtime.
Still, it is similar in that a blank space has to be filled with words.

A pathologist cannot simply say, “This looks like this,” or “This seems rather bad,” as if offering a casual impression.
The work depends on how well those observations can be put into language.

Beyond the microscope, there are tens of thousands of cells.
They have different faces and form different shapes.

To understand what kind of tissue they make up, and what kind of biological behavior they may show, we look at the appearance of each cell, consider the overall picture, review the clinical findings, and move toward a diagnosis.

Diagnosis is the act of integrating all the information taken into the mind.
That, I think, is the real work of a pathologist.

We pick up findings, integrate them, and put them into words.

But if we do not understand what those findings mean, there is no way to integrate them.

With AI, a diagnosis can probably be organized to some extent.
But the stage before that is where the true skill of the pathologist lies.

From the outside, we may look as if we are sitting still.
Inside our heads, however, all kinds of specialized knowledge are turning around and around.

The same may be true of newspaper articles.
A reporter has to gather material, investigate it, and then integrate it.

If several facts are given to AI, it will probably turn them into something that looks like an article.

But AI will not go out and report.
The gathering of material still depends on a capable reporter.

In that sense, the work of finding something meaningful in the society spread out before one’s eyes may resemble the work of considering what pathological condition is suggested by microscopic findings.

And then, to put it into words and fill the blank space is difficult work.
It is where skill is tested.

AI can arrange collected information into a plausible piece of writing.
But it is still the work of human beings to notice, first of all, where something feels wrong in the tissue under the microscope, or what in society deserves to become an article.

To fill a blank space is not simply to increase the number of words.
It is to find meaning in what is visible, and to give that meaning language.

Filling a blank space begins with seeing what truly matters. 

・・・

Vocabulary Notes for Learners

• dense fog = 濃霧
• seasonal rain front = 梅雨前線
• dutifully = 律儀に、きちんと
• public airwaves = 公共の電波
• casual impression = 何気ない印象、感想
• biological behavior = 生物学的態度、ふるまい
• integrate = 統合する
• plausible = もっともらしい
• where skill is tested = 腕の良し悪しが試されるところ
• what truly matters = 本当に大切なこと、意味のあること