Topic: Science & Culture



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Name: Paul Grobstein
Username: pgrobste@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Evolving
Date: Fri Oct 29 11:50:09 EDT 1999
Comments:

To all visitors:

Serendip was born in 1994, and developed forums in 1996. The forums have been and continue to be a place where everyone is invited to make comments, ask questions, and carry on conversations about anything and everything that comes to mind when exploring Serendip. As such, they have been and continue to be an essential part of Serendip's development. At the same time, any developing organism needs periodically to refresh itself. The past remains but is put in boxes to clear the mind for the next part of the future. So have we done, as of today, with Serendip's forums. All past material is still available, by clicking on highlighted years above to access forum archives. And we have, as of today, a blank slate for the next phase of Serendip's development. If you have been here in the past, you're already a part of what Serendip has become so far. Please leave your thoughts as part of the next phase of Serendip's life. And if you're new, please join in as well.

Name: Cindy
Username:
Subject: why??
Date: Tue Sep 26 11:40:39 EDT 2000
Comments:
Anne Sexton rewrote the story because she wanted to bring fairy tales into a new light by turning it from childrens' stories into satires. She transformed the story because she wanted to entertain an adult instead of children.
Name: anonymous
Username:
Subject:
Date: Tue Sep 26 12:31:48 EDT 2000
Comments:
When i first thought of flatland, I thought of like a plataeu with green grass - a world with no colors - a world with people who act like robots - where truth is exposed - no houses, just land - no geographic varietions
Name: Jessica
Username: jamiller@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Galileo
Date: Thu Oct 5 11:46:33 EDT 2000
Comments:
I think that Galileo is both, it is tragic in what he is forced to endure for his ideas, however, it is more optimistic when you think in perspective of what we as a species have accomplished.
Name: Cindy
Username: qzhan@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Cindy
Date: Thu Oct 26 11:39:01 EDT 2000
Comments:
From what i heard about the story, i think that Jed would be the one who jumped and rachel probably picked up her feet and walked. As i hypothesised earlier, girls tend to think more about the things they do and boys likes to act on impulse.
Name: Cindy Zhan
Username: qzhan@brynmawr.edu
Subject: sources of understanding
Date: Tue Nov 14 11:45:37 EST 2000
Comments:
The sources my understands are my intuitions(i tend to trust them), my experiences and other people's experieces and sometimes readings from news paper and magazines. My intuitions help me first in understanding a promblem or situation. My experiences either agrees or disagree with my intuition. And other people's experiences gives me a broader view of that particular situation of problem or situation.
Name: Cindy
Username: qzhan@brnynmawr.edu
Subject: Bryn Mawr as a cultural institution
Date: Thu Nov 30 11:40:34 EST 2000
Comments:
Bryn mawr as a cultural institution is generally very liberal,i've seen cases in which ppl who are conservatives are made fun of to make them feel excluded, inferior. I've also witness cases in which minorities are made to feel outcasted by those who aren't minorities who had very little contact with minorities prior to coming to Bryn Mawr.
Name: Cindy
Username: qzhan@brynmawr.edu
Subject: imaginary culture
Date: Tue Dec 5 11:48:49 EST 2000
Comments:
People feeling bad about them selves when they see others have what they don't is inevidable. Even when society is structured so that everyone is equal. (e.g, communist countries.) Some people are born with certain charactrers that cannot be obtained. For example, beauty and intelligence. Therefore, if one is to create a culture in which no one would feel good by making other people feel bad, then everyone in that culture would be homogenous.They would look the same, have same level of intelligence status in society.
Name: Carol
Username: cfield@brynmawr.edu
Subject: what the cover says
Date: Tue Sep 4 15:18:26 EDT 2001
Comments:
What the cover says to me is that the process of asking questions can lead to a better understanding of your topic which, in turn, can lead to a way of fitting the pieces of a puzzle together. However, in this illustration it's not clear where these pieces of the puzzle originate. Have they fallen off the completed cube, or have they exploded from the sphere? Will the blue puzzle piece work even though it has spots of red on it? We could think of this picture as an illustration of how we might put together the pieces of a life. We ask ourselves questions about who we want to be, we try to come to an understanding of what we want to be and what we want to do, then we try to fit the pieces together in a way that makes sense. The ambiguity about whether the puzzle pieces have fallen off the cube or have erupted from the sphere tells me that the questions we ask ourselves don't come from a single source. Serendipity happens, tragedy happens, the world intrudes, and our lives must be modified even after we think we have the puzzle solved.
Name: John Bapty Oates
Username: johnb-oates@humantruth.co.uk
Subject: Morality
Date: Sun Sep 9 07:48:48 EDT 2001
Comments:
As an outsider I find Bryn Mawr unusually and refreshingly liberal. Not long ago, in the UK anyway, student challenges to the status quo were regarded as naive emotional protest which would soon be knocked out of students' heads, of realistic necessity.

Cindy Zhan writes about intuition and her own and other peoples' experiences as character-formers, and about the problems caused by inequality. Carol Field observes that we come to understanding the puzzle of what we want to be and do, then try to fit the pieces together in a way that makes sense, but 'Serendipity happens, tragedy happens, the world intrudes, and our lives must be modified even after we think we have the puzzle solved'.

The fact is that we are the wilful self, the chooser. The self is presented with three things - (1) Reality - the existing framework of world-life and all its institutions and affairs, which I call the Machine. (2) The conscious mind, which contains the self but is itself contained by Machine-reality and whose thinking (incapable of truth) can be manipulated by both the Machine and the wilful self buthas the 'still small voice of conscience'. (3) The postconscious mind, a free and independent mind (outcast by the conscience except for the trickle of conscience) whose function is pure truth, making it the source of our true morality whose basic principles it manages to convey as conscience.

As long as we have to learn from the Machine in order to work within it, we shall remain locked in the conscious sphere of fundamentally false thinking and largely isolated from our true humanity represented by the universally common postconscious (for example, conscientious scientists visited the atom bomb on Japan because their moral scruples were outgunned by Machine-realistic reason). In order to live humantruly we have to open to our postconscious, recognise the fatal failings of the Machine, and reconstitute the Machine in order that our reality fully reflects our true humanity, making us the fulfilment of our true intellect, as we should be.

In a humantrue society the word inequality will have no meaning, for all will have equal status as a person, regardless of any other evaluation, just like the very different members of a family. In this respect, the concept of equal 'rights' is also meaningless unless rights are weighed in the same scales as responsibilities.(See www.humantruth.co.uk)

Name: Elaina Van Buren
Username: enavb_7@yahoo.com
Subject: science
Date: Mon Feb 11 19:53:12 EST 2002
Comments:
Im in the 8th grade and in the 8 years i've taken science i have relized this year that its all based on your common sense and being a scientist. you do science every day in a way sometimes you'll never know

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