Links to Spring 2008 Courses

• Neurobiology and Behavior
• Neural and Behavioral Sciences
• Emerging Genres
• Philosophy of Science

The "objectivity"/"subjectivity" spectrum:
having one's cake and eating it too?

by Paul Grobstein
4 December 2007

An interesting issue came up in my college seminar course today. Supposing one accepts that absolute "objectivity" is not achievable, ie that all understandings are "stories" that inevitably have a personal context dependence (some "subjectivity") to them. And one notices that many people are more attracted to stories with a personal element to them than they are to the "dry" stories told by scientists/academics. If absolute objectivity is unachievable, is there any rationale for putting up with (even aspiring) to "dryness", ie for preferring more objective stories to less objective things? for teaching students the virtues of trying to be more "objective"?

I think there in fact is but that it doesn't any longer lie along the obvious path of asserting that dryness is needed to get one to "Truth" or "Reality" .... those notions necessarily go out the window along with a recognition that the context-free view is not achievable. One needs instead to approach the matter from a different direction. Some thoughts about that direction ...

Read More

A Visit with Susan Stryker

by Anne Dalke and Critical Feminist Studies
11 October 2007

I think queer means valuing that which is off-center and against the norm... being queer means you have some consciousness about norms, and how they are produced-- often through violence and suppression of difference--if you are queer you are aware of where your boundaries are, and when you cross them..and you celebrate your differences and uniqueness.

Read More

Links to Fall 2007 Courses

• Biodiversity
• Storytelling as Inquiry
• Critical Feminist Studies
• Biology 103

Paths to Story Telling as Life:
Fellow Traveling with Richard Rorty

by Paul Grobstein
2 July 2007

I first encountered Richard Rorty's work rather late in both our lives. Having done so, I regret never having met him and, with his death on 8 June 2007, the loss of the chance ever to do so. Perhaps though its all for the best. Following a quite different path, I found myself in interesting places that Rorty too had reached. That different people can get to a place in different ways, and in the absence of any direct connection with one another, provides reassurance that there is some kind of a meaningful there there. And a reason to share stories both about how one got there and where one might explore next.

Read More