Paul Stories

Hard to imagine. I worked for Paul in the early 80's at the U. of C. I was at Paul & Peggy's wedding. That they could both be gone when I am still what I consider to be young (ish) seems somehow unfair. He was a sort of hybrid, both scientist and Shaman, who unfailingly both found new viewpoints and embraced other's viewpoints. He introduced me to Single Malt Scotch, and to a new way of allowing creativity while still providing guidance. What a mind! Complex, volatile, beautiful.

Paul left quite a legacy at Bryn Mawr College, and I will feel honored to wear his Stanford cap and gown at commencement this year, when my first graduate student receives his degree. (Thank you, Jed! That's very kind of you to make Paul's robes available to me. And thank you Kim, Anne, Alice, and Marc for making this connection.)

It's now my seventh year at Bryn Mawr College, and from early on in my time here, Paul stood out to me as an uniquely thoughtful, questioning, and creative individual who really made a difference at the college. Let me say a few words about what I feel I have learned from his example.

In 2009, I co-organized a Class of 1902 Lecture with the philosophy department, by a speaker named Guy Blaylock who talked about interpretational problems in quantum mechanics. Paul followed this lecture with a flurry of email messages to the speaker and physics faculty, and posted some of his thoughts here:

https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/paul-grobstein/multiple-worlds-multiple-interpretations-quantum-physics-and-brain

How did he have time to do this?! He attended a lecture in another department, personally engaged everyone, wrote a blog entry placing major themes from the talk within the broader human context of subjectivity of empirical observation, and linked to a large number of related blog entries inspired by similar experiences that show he does this sort of thing all the time. I on the other hand, went more or less back to survival mode, preparing my courses, reappointment dossier, and so on.

Like many of us in academia, Paul would get incredibly excited about ideas, but unlike most of us, he managed to consistently keep the real substance of the joy of thinking and at the forefront of his daily activities in a public and inclusive way. It is so easy to get buried beneath the practical pressures of grading, course preparation, and scholarly publication in one's discipline, and to relegate this universal childlike intellectual spark to the back burner, but Paul made it a shared priority. It is also true that as we advance in our disciplines and specialize, we tend to grow apart from one another. But, there is always something special about the original seed, the root, the central foundational essence of any field. This is usually the most interesting part and touches on the broadest and most universal questions — the ones we can share with others. It is the organic living earth that feeds the individual and collective satisfaction of contemplative souls driven dually by the arrogance of a quest to understand what others have not yet understood, and by the humility of an awareness that this understanding is of value only to the extent that it can be meaningfully shared with others. Without it, we risk finding ourselves on ever bifurcating scholarly branches, lost in synthetic and lonely detail.

It's hard to walk this talk, and I can't say I've succeeded at harmonizing my life's work, values, and intellectual curiosity in this way. However, it is important to keep trying. To me, Paul's example is proof that another way is possible.

All the best, Michael

Missing you today. Happy birthday, and thank you for helping me belief in myself through times I really needed it. You helped my thoughts develop from ramblings that were all over the place into meaningful, logical, and reasonable ideas and made me feel like I had worthwhile things to say and share. Thank you for what you gave, and continue to give me.

I post this just so people will know how long ago Paul started in science. He and I were in 6th grade, Junior High and Senior High together. Both of our fathers were teaching at Stanford. My clearest memory of Paul in 6th grade was doing a science project with him. It had to do with watching mice go through a simple maze and then teaching them to go through it differently. It was my first experience with someone cussing too! We had to mark the mice to tell them apart so we notched their ears. Paul would hold them and I would do the dirty work. Only he got bitten and, oh my, what words!

I also remember him riding to a dance on a bicycle in high school with his date on the handlebars. I'm not sure if his car broke down or what, but I have that image stuck in my brain.

I'm so sorry to hear that he is gone, but I am delighted to see all the good work he left behind.

I, like others, still sit here thinking that he would be with us for ever. The profoundness of his stories still resonate about us. So much so, that recently my Principal asked if I could get that "Quircky Professor" I always talk about to come do a staff development for our school to open the school year. As one could imagine, my eyes welled up with tears and I just could not bring myself to admit that in fact he couldn't. All I could do is utter, "Ill see." I somehow feel that Paul would see that as silly, but after reading all that everyone has posted I know that I was truly blessed to have been able to explore the world and myself with him and all that have attended his summer institues. I have always told people that I learned more in the two to three weeks at Bryn Mawr each summer than I did in my 4+ college and graduate years. I think it is a great credit to Bryn Mawr for recognizing the brilliance of Paul and what he brought to the world. I somehow find myself drawn as much to all your "stories" about Paul as I was to the man himself. Thank you all for sharing your stories and enriching my life by telling them. Like him, they are a treasure!

Hello All,

It has taken me forever to write something on this blog. I can give you a variety of reasons, but I think I would probably put 'denial' at the top of that list. Today is a pretty dreary day and as such really mirrors my mood. I have been reading this blog on an almost daily basis and I am truly amazed to say that I thought it was impossible to care about and respect Paul more than I already did - but hearing about his endless interactions and unwavering support of others has once again made the impossible - possible. Thanks for that Paul. I met Paul my Sophomore year at BMC - a period of time during which I really had no idea who I was or what I was going to do with my life.

To give you a little bit of background - I was an international student - my family lived (and still lives) in Athens, Greece. My freshman year was a disaster and as a Sophomore I was hanging on by a thread. I was on academic probation and as far as I was concerned felt that I lacked dedication and drive.

ENTER PAUL.

The first class that I took with Paul was Neurobiology and Behavior - for the first time in a long time I wanted to get to class in the morning - to listen to Paul tell me that I basically knew very little about "the big picture" - what a relief - no wonder I was so under-dedicated and unmotivated :) Days turned into weeks and Paul and I moved our interactions from the classroom to his office. I remember the countless hours I spent sitting across from him complaining, staring, humming, studying, reading, talking... Paul seemed to put life and life's problems into perspective. Thinking back I cannot even recall what I was complaining about, but no issue that I had was too insignificant for Paul to discuss. For the first time since I left home and traveled across the Atlantic to attend college in a foreign country - did I feel like an adult. Paul's questions about my life, or discussions were what I believe allowed me to make that transition from naive high school student to still very naive but more grown up college student.

I remember one thing in particular Paul used to do to me - on the days when I would enter his office claiming that my life was a "shit storm" and that I was unprepared for an exam, a presentation, a meeting with another professor, etc. etc. Paul used to say "Lisa, where are you know?"... I would say "the biology department".... and Paul would respond with "In what city?"

L: "Bryn Mawr"
P: "State?"
L: "Pennsylvania"
P: "Country?"
L: "U.S.A"
P: "Planet?"
L: "Earth"
P: "Galaxy?"
L: "Paul what is the point here?!!!!!!!"
P: "Well you aren't thinking about the initial problem are you?"

:) :) :) :) This is how Paul dealt with my high-strung personality and tendency to complain.

In reality as I sit here and write I realize that I could go on and on and on with memories and stories and ideas that Paul instilled in me. But what I feel that I need to say is that Paul changed me. He fundamentally changed the way I think and what I value. Paul left an imprint on both my heart and my mind. I can say - without a doubt - that I have never met anyone like Paul and do not believe that I ever will again. Paul was an extraordinary human being, a caring mentor and a friend when I needed one. Paul made me feel like it was okay that I didn't have everything figured out. That it was okay I made mistakes, and that it was those mistakes that made me unique. I will miss Paul everyday. The thought of returning to BMC over and over and him never again being there near breaks my heart. But those imprints that he made are never going anywhere and that reassures me.

One of the most remarkable individuals I have known in my short 24 years. Paul Grobstein inspired me in ways I do not even know how to explain. He is one of the select few who I consider responsible for making me a biology major and the individual I am today. Those lucky enough to have known Paul understand.

<3

Paul had some ideas about biology that I enjoyed thinking of as a little bit crackpot. One of our recurring bones of contention was the role of selection in evolution. Paul, ever focused on the generative, the emergent, saw evolution mainly as a process of exploration of the phenotype space. For Paul, evolution's drivers were diversification and complexification: evolution's creative processes, rather than the competition and winnowing that most biologists (starting with Darwin) focus on.

I remember one conversation in particular in which Paul said to me that evolution is like diffusion over the space of all possible forms. I asked, "Okay, so what's doing the diffusing?" Paul smiled and answered with that slight added emphasis that he used in order to let people know that he was about to pack a paragraph's worth of meaning into the very next word he was to say: "Matter."

I actually quite like that. Most biologists talk only about molecules, cells, organisms, species. More than any other scientist I know, Paul talked about life. He anthropomorphized life, and he considered (perfectly rightly, but who but him would bother to talk about it?) life to be a mere subset of matter.

It comforts me to think that Paul, though no longer part of that subset, is still participating in evolution, that generative, creative, emergent process which he found to be so beautiful.

I had the pleasure of taking Paul's Neurobio course way back in the late 80's, to fulfill a requirement. It is one of two or three classes that I still viscerally remember (and very positively remember). Part of this is because the material was so different from that in most of my classes. But part of it had to be because of Paul. What he said, how he said it. His voice, so resonant and pleasing to listen to, resonates in my head all these years later.

And I have wonderful memories of talking with and listening to (and being listened to by) Paul these last 9 years that I have been working here. Not as many as I now wish I did: somehow I thought he'd always be here . . .

But even when I wasn't talking with him, one of the joys of my work here has been hearing students talk about him. I often say that one of the things I like about my job is the opportunity to play intellectual matchmaker. There have been many students over the years to whom I've said, "You know, you should really think about taking Neurobio and Behavior (or Bio 103)." Many of them have done so, and although I know many of those would have found their way to Paul without me, I still take pleasure in remembering those moments.

I can't picture Bryn Mawr without him. I've said that many times in recent weeks. Thanks to all for helping me realize that for a long time to come, at least, I don't really have to. And yet . . .

I met Paul Grobstein long after my college years, when he gave a talk for the Princeton Alumnae Club. I was just starting to understand the role of stories in my work as a user experience/usability designer, and couldn't tear myself away from Serendip.

When Paul agreed to give a talk at the Usability Professionals' Association, he connected the dots between our (largely cognitive) work and his in neurobiology. One of his examples -- I forget the context now -- was that to walk is to let ourselves fall, and then catch ourselves, over and over. Whenever I think of him, I hear Laurie Anderson's song Walking and Falling.

I wish I had known him better.

1.
On the day it seemed the outerworld could do naught to roust the inner, spied in the muck of the empty lake: an egret feeding in a renegade rivulet notes her notice. She leaps over gravity, laboring into flight. Her partner joins her & they lift off together, around the bend (synchronous wings). Follow them to the vanishing point and discover a slender wooden skiff, half-buried in the lakebed, maybe from the 20s, less rotten than you'd imagine, made by hand.

Once, it too had been blue.

2.
Dear Anne,

Can you post this image? I took this picture during one of the last Evolving Systems group conversations. The way that Paul was all stretched out and so comfortable and was silhouetted against the blinds just struck me. In retrospect it seems like a strange impulse to exercise in the middle of a conversation, without telling anyone or (until now) showing anyone. Strange things happen sometimes.

Paul's loss is weighing heavy on me. I spent the better part of the night tracing old threads on Serendip. His presence there borders on the infinite.

I feel resonance with your inability, as expressed on the stories page, to pick out and tell a single story about Paul. For someone who was so committed to storytelling as a concept and for someone who was, let's be honest, possessed of enough idiosyncrasies to inspire any number of amusing anecdotes, there seems to be a failure of a central narrative, or rather, most of us to whom the responsibility has fallen to play the role of narrator in these stories...perhaps aren't able to feel the kind of traction that an omniscient narrator wants to have as s/he begins to spin out her web. Maybe that's partly because the story of Paul is not really captured in either his peculiarities or in our isolated bemusements of him. Paul's storytelling was conversation, it lived in the back and forth of every moment. And while he was always working towards (and often from) some kind of conclusion or hypothesis, what was most valuable about the experience of being with Paul was the evolution of the story, its ebb and flow in and through each of its incarnations.

The first time I recall being aware of Paul, he spoke for a very long time from the back of a faculty meeting about why he should be able to smoke in his lab and office and why the College's (then new) smoking policy violated the sanctity of what he considered an extension of his home. I remember how totally comfortable he seemed to be talking (and talking), having and extending his ideas as he spoke them, taking his time, and making his point quite elegantly. I also recall how, even as a devoted smoker, which I was back then, I was surprised by the complete lunacy of his argument, which was outrageous in equal measures for its incapacity to recognize the impact of smoke on others and for its total failure to recognize that his position was hopeless.

Of course Paul was all of the things my sketch of a story suggests about him: eloquent, occasionally long-winded, deeply committed to his work and its connection to his life, passionate, oblivious, and a tilter-against-windmills. But this impression is too static, too limited, at once too quick to identify him and too slow. And my first impression of him, because it was a first impression, is almost simple enough to be inscribed in a way that contains some meaning. And yet who Paul actually was and what he did that seem to me to be *remarkable* are almost completely excluded from this sketch. To our students and to our acquaintances we are perhaps all always destined to be punchlines or hopelessly cartooned in their recollections. The brain, as Paul never tired of pointing out, makes shortcuts in perception that forestalls authentic knowing. The story of Paul wants this included in it. It insists.

It also wants to say that it is not and cannot be a monologue. One does not know Paul by describing him, relating him, or sharing observations about him. One knows Paul in conversation and the story of him, if it can be told, will need to be told in many and diverse voices. And it will be an impoverished tale in part for not having his own voice present in its telling, but it will perhaps be enriched by his reverberations, which ring in many of our voices--those of students, colleagues, friends, and correspondents.

It will certainly be enriched by our behaving as if he is listening, even if this is merely an operating fiction and no truth about the universe. It is a story about the universe and Paul's place in it.

This is the beginning of what I waited all night to come. Thanks for being there to write this to. I think it turns out that whatever it is that I'm saying has to do with saying and knowing as collaborative acts. Which makes saying and knowing inherently theatrical. And scientific as well, since each utterance is a hypothesis that one tests on one's interlocutors. One tries, as Beckett says, and fails...then tries again and fails again, always endeavoring to fail better, or as Paul liked to say, to get it less wrong.

All best wishes. I look forward to being with you Saturday. And after.

mark

The pictures of Paul are heartbreaking, especially the one with his pipe from so long ago. If we'd only known. I can't resist, though, sharing a few more of my own. The first is a "Portrait of the Scientist As A Young Man," 1991-ish.

The other -- well, like Ann's picture (wonderful picture of Audrey!), Paul was always so happy with children, in this case two of mine. That little girl is now 22.

Below is an initial editor's comment on Paul's essay, "From Complexity to Emergence and Beyond," the first of seven published by Bryn Mawr's Emergence Working Group in the Spring/Summer 2007 issue of the journal, Soundings.

"The author has described the evolution of a bipartite brain with capacities for both emergence and rules-and- properties thinking .. and asserted that we needn't choose between these perspectives. ... He next claims that we should evaluate both approaches to inquiry according to their usefulness and generativity. This claim, then, sets up the following section, where the author argues that in the interests of innovation and productivity we need to become non-foundationalists and give up our notions of truth, reality, and objectivity. A quantum leap to be sure! ... Indeed, it is a very high stakes argument of breath-taking complexity in which nothing less than truth itself is in question... it is not clear how far the author is actually willing to go in banishing the notion of an objective world. He seems to waver between a world "half created and half discovered" like the one experienced by Wordsworth in "Tintern Abbey" and a more radical vision of experience in which "the construction of the brain" creates all of the "properties and rules" found in those "things out there."

Jan Trembley

I think I probably drived Paul crazy in the Evolution of Stories/Story of Evolution class. In most of our seminars I would debate consistently about brain function in animals and humans and scientific fact. I embrace the 'there is no right or wrong' whereas scientific Paul studied the 'black and white.' But I remember the tiny smile in the corner of his mouth while we fired theories at each other; knowing that he enjoyed the debates as much as I did.

He will be greatly missed. I'm glad I had the experience of his teaching.

x

My dad and I had trouble finding things to talk about, but Paul's intro bio course changed a lot of that. For a semester, my freshman year, my dad followed the class on Serendip, and we'd talk about ideas Paul brought up (what makes something living?), and for that semester, my dad and I had a real relationship and would talk often, and that continued to build. Paul's ideas, and his ways of thinking about ideas, really changed me. His door was always open, and when I was freaking out about graduating and not knowing what I was going to do, he told me I didn't have to know. He said just take what feels like the next right step for right now, and eventually, one step will lead to another and you'll be where you're supposed to be. Words I live by today.

What a huge loss.

every year i invited paul to come talk to the students in a summer program i co-facilitated at bryn mawr. and every year he came--always on the first friday morning of the program when the students were just getting comfortable with each other and settled with what we were doing. and instead of speaking in some pre-decided way, paul would first ask to hear a little about them and what they were doing here. i don't know just what he picked up on, but he'd go on to pose a few provocative questions--different each year and keyed to the particular group--and pretty soon he'd have all of us unsettled in that very focused way that's about puzzling out new ideas. and he'd go on and do that with us, letting our questions emerge and take and shift shape...until we'd leave for lunch, together in a new way.

The first time I saw Paul was 10 years and 3 months ago. I was giving my job talk at Bryn Mawr, and some ways into it, I saw a disheveled man pacing outside the classroom. He eventually came into the room and sat near the back. I thought he was a homeless man from the local community. At the end of the talk, he asked a question: "Do you really think this is the way to create artificial intelligence?" This was not a homeless man, but someone that cut right to the issue. "No, this is the way that we currently have to do it. I think we need something more... emergent," I replied. That was Paul, and he become one of my best friends at BMC.

Emergence became a theme of all of ours: many of us met every week, nearly continuously, for 5 years to discuss "it". This wouldn't have happened---couldn't have happened---without Paul. He certainly did listen...to everyone! What patience!

I learned much from Paul on all aspects of life during the last 10 years. I hope we can all continue our serendipitous adventure as exemplified by Paul.

I have been thinking about how people, as much as any other natural element, create and contribute to the landscapes we live in. Paul was a deep force of nature — strong, quiet, insistent on life. He was one of the first people to welcome me to Bryn Mawr. And I mean welcome: to greet me, to invite me into conversation, to affirm my place in the landscape. That was 17 years ago, and so to lose Paul feels like losing something that should always be there (Sandy’s giant Copper Beach). I keep remembering – and not comprehending – that he is gone. And so I am comforted by his words (thanks, Anne, for surfacing them) that we might "come to see disappearance not as loss but rather as transformation… joyful acknowledgement that what has lived beside us now lives inside us." Paul certainly lives inside me, and when I lit a candle for him and placed it, at dusk on the day he died, among the bright red poppies that fill the fields here in England, I thought of how Paul welcomed so many not only into the landscape of Bryn Mawr but into our own interior landscapes, making us at home in both.

I read Paul's commentary on loss just now through teary eyes, only to discover he was again, still, after he no longer is here, helping me to think anew and imagine unforeseen possibilities. His idea that every death is a disruption that implies not just a loss but a possibility for gain immediately resonated with me (even as much as I did not want to believe it at this moment). I thought of our Copper Beach, a tall, perhaps 40 foot high massive, tree that stood for years on the front north corner of our home at 57 Station Road. If you go by there now, you will not see it: we lost it a few years back after long efforts to keep it alive. It was so sad to see it go and, of course, I was convinced I had done something wrong (Joan, my wife, is less prone to these second-guessings). Yet, quickly the rhododendrons all around the tree starting growing due to the greater sunlight exposure, and they have become massive, beautiful, colorful additions to our front yard spring flowerings. All made possible by the death of our much beloved Copper Beach. I think that Paul is Bryn Mawr's Copper Beach (not the tree on the quad near his office). May his passing be the basis for a greater flowering of the intellectual diversity he so long so eloquently championed.

Like "Wil Franklin", I find it hard to find a story about Paul (though I loved reading the one of Audrey). The idea of "smooth as a lullaby and prickly as a pear" rings for me. For me, the story of Paul is about his qualities and ideas.

I remember when Roland, Paul and I had lunch to talk about starting the book group that became the Graduate Idea Forum (GIF) in early 2000. So many of my memories of Paul are tied up in that group as we challenged one another- I questioned his "passionate skepticism" with my "passionate curiosity," disagreed about having only coin-flip decisions (his assertion which he backed off of a little in one of our final visits), or his insistence that frog brain and cortex are all there is (and me a lover of the limbic system!). I felt like we all provoked one another to new ways of thinking, experiencing and feeling. Yet for all the provocation, there was always warmth, positive regard and authenticity- characteristics I know from my work create ripe opportunities for growth.

I think that for me, one of the gifts of Paul was his ability to provoke growth in others and his joy in seeing it happen.

I recently was at a funeral where someone stood and said of the deceased- "I didn't know Glenn, I'd only met him 2-3 times: but I can say this, I could never confuse him for anyone else." I think we could probably all say something similar.

Paul was like no other- provocative & caring, open & opinionated, depressed & joyful- not typical polar opposites, but always flowing among varied "situated positions"; revising stories; flowing like water in life and now flowing like air. Keeping that spirit alive seems an important project to continue in his honor.

Serendip represents and embodies Paul's philosophy, in life and in academics, of learning and discovery through play and happy accidents.

We will all miss you, Paul.

But, we will keep playing and discovering.

Deepak.