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My old colleague and friend Eric Raimy posted some interesting thoughts in Facebook recently.   Some excerpts for those who can't get there directly, followed by some thoughts of my own ...

Barack Obama is a serious and committed pragmatist, in the best sense of that word, and I understand his inaugural commitment to "restore science to its rightful place" in exactly those terms. What's important about science is not its certainty about ways to act, but rather its willingness to aggressively acknowledge uncertainty, and so to hold to the fire any presumptions about how to act that derive from any source other than clearly defined and commonly accepted observations to date.

Benjamin Olshin is assistant professor of Philosophy, History, and History of Science at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Paul Grobstein is professor of Biology at Bryn Mawr College. The two met and discovered common interests, like this one, at a meeting on "Building the Scientific Mind" in Vancouver in May 2007 (for another common interest see Reality and Virtual Reality). Their ongoing exchange is provided here to encourage further conversation. Your thoughts are welcome in the forum area below.

Olshin - 30 November 2008

Learning from "From the Inside":
Being on the Spectrum

Paul Grobstein
December 2008

Excerpts from and comments on Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison (Crown Publishers, 2007)