Paul Grobstein's blog
Getting acquainted ...
Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Fri, 08/10/2007 - 12:40pm.
Welcome. Glad you stopped by. This isn't so much a "blog" as a place for me (and you if you're interested) to keep track of what I'm currently up to on Serendip. In reverse chronological order below are teasers to things I'm thinking about that are relatively well developed. Click on them for more details, and to get to forum areas where you can add thoughts to help both of us think more.
(See also read more, posting responses, other Exchange creations, my Serendip home page)
Serendip. open-ended public conversation, blogging?
Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 9:24pm.Serendip as Facilitator of Open-ended Public Conversation
and its relevance for
Thinking About Blogging, Literature, and Human Well-Being
Paul Grobstein
Prepared for discussion in Emerging Genres, 24 April 2005
Aspirations, successes, challenges (1994-2005), and update
Irreducibility without dualism: chaos or indeterminacy?
Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Fri, 04/11/2008 - 7:55pm.Interesting discussion in the emergence group this past week, based on a presentation/paper by Mikio Agaki to be continued next week. Here's my my read of what Mikio is about, why it matters to all of us, where I am currently worried he may get into trouble, and what the implications are for the future.
Unintended consequences, unconceived alternatives, and ... life (among other things)
Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Mon, 03/31/2008 - 7:58pm.Recent conversations in the emergence working group on "unintended consequences" have reminded me of a book on the problem of "unconceived alternatives", and those in turn relate in interesting ways to issues in philosophy of science, in neurobiology, in human social organization, and, of course, in life in general. Let me see if I can explain.
Unintended Consequences
The mind-body problem: in theory, in life, in politics
Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Sun, 03/30/2008 - 12:02pm.The Murky Politics of Mind Body, in today's New York Times Magazine, intersects in interesting ways with a conversation this week in our senior seminar course in neural and behavioral sciences. The Times article poses the question
"How much of a difference should it make to health care - and health insurance - if a condition is physical or mental?"
Exploring depression: drugs, psychotherapy, stories, conflicts, a conscious/unconscious dissociation?
Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Sun, 03/02/2008 - 5:52pm.For a variety of reasons, I've been thinking a lot about depression recently, not only about peoples' experiences with it (including my own) but also about how to make sense of it from a neurobiological perspective. A variety of conversations, including a recent one in a senior seminar course in neural and behavioral science, has significantly added to my thoughts, helped to crystallize some of them, and suggested some intriguing directions for further exploration.
From complexity to emergence and beyond ...
Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Sat, 03/01/2008 - 4:56pm.My most current extended writing on complexity, emergence, and beyond ... into a "hybrid" world involving both chance and intention. Recently published in the interdiscipinary journal Soundings (Volume 90, Issue 1/2, pp 301-323, 2007). Available as a Word file.
And assigned as a reading in a recent course. Which in turn triggered an essay by a student in that course, Alexandra Funk, making an interesting link to Mary Catherine Bateson's 1989 book Composing a Life. An excerpt from Alexandra's essay ...
Emergence: Biological, Literary, and ....
Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Wed, 02/13/2008 - 6:46pm.Evolution and Literature:
Notes on Change and Order
What All Educators Should Know About the Brain
Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Wed, 01/30/2008 - 4:36pm.
Evolution/Science: Inverting the Relationship Between Randomness and Meaning
Submitted by Paul Grobstein on Mon, 01/28/2008 - 7:19pm.The past Sunday's NY Times Book Review has a review of a book by Anne Harrington called The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine. Its interesting in its own right, directly relevant to a course I'm currently teaching, but connects in interesting ways to some other things bubbling around as well. The book is reviewed by Jerome Groopman, a cancer specialist, who writes ....
