Paul Grobstein's blog

"Booming, buzzing confusion":
Its role in biological, cultural, and individual evolution

Some reflections on The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories, Spring, 2009 (in progress).  With thanks for everyone's participation in story evolution ...

The long, wide perspective

There must be something in the air this month ...

• Philadelphia -  Synesthesia
• Seattle -  Downtime
• Ireland -  Adventures to the stars ... telling tales of science and art

All unrelated, so far as I know, except here, where they all connect to ....

The Evolving Story of the Bipartite Brain

An interesting juxtaposition of a visit to Cezanne and Beyond at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a course conversation about "Against Method' in science and "Against Interpretation" in art.  Some thoughts about the latter from an on-line forum ...

Background reading

Recent

• Rachel Reiland, Get Me Out of Here, 2004
• Pamela Spiro Wagner and Carolyn S. Spiro, Divided Minds, 2005
• Daniel Tammet, Born on a Blue Day, 2006
• John Elder Robison, Look Me in the Eye, 2007
• Howard Dully and Charles Fleming, My Lobotomy, 2007
• Elyn R. Saks, The Center Cannot Hold, 2007
• Richard Powers, The Echo Maker, 2006 (fiction)

Earlier

A very interesting and important article in the NYTimes magazine this Sunday: "The Medical Detectives: What's Wrong with Summer Stiers?" Focusing on one patient enrolled in a new National Institutes of Health "Undiagnosed Diseases Program" the article raises hopes and tugs heart strings, ending with Stiers recognition that "she couldn't offer any real information about her disease until she was dead and donated her body to science" but

"She even dares to hope ... that the scientists might learn something that will point them to a way to ease her own psychic and physical pain."

Notes for a discussion in the Cafe Scientifique at Bryn Mawr College on 23 February 2009

moderated by Paul Grobstein and Anne Dalke

Background (partial):

• Dayton, Ohio, 1925 (Inherit the Wind, 1955, 1960)
• Dover, Pennsylvania, 2004
• Kansas, 2005
• Texas, -2009

For discussion:

"Serendip is a gathering place for people who suspect that life's instructions are always ambiguous and incomplete ... an expanding forum and a continually developing set of resources to explore and support intellectual and social change ... in how one makes sense of life" .... Serendip home page

An interesting/satisfying Serendip couple of days ... 

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 ...