integrity
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It’s confirmed: the statistic over which I was so amazed — that 39.6 percent of prominent scientists lost a parent when they were kids — is twaddle. Thanks to blogreader Ryan (who sent the full text of the article I had quoted), I am spared the fate of including a bogus stat in a sidebar in my forthcoming book.
I want to write further about my error (which was silly and avoidable, not a minor slip), but I want to quote a letter from TH Huxley in doing so. Whenever I turn to that letter, though, I am so deeply moved that I have to quote half the letter, just in case someone hasn’t read this remarkable thing. Sometime next week I’ll write about the stat error.
Huxley and his wife had experienced the most unimaginable loss — the death of their four-year-old son Noel. First, a diary entry from the day after Noel’s death, followed by Huxley’s letter a few days later:
September 20, 1860
Diary of Thomas Huxley
And the same child, our Noel, our first-born, after being for nearly four years our delight and our joy, was carried off by scarlet fever in forty-eight hours. This day week he and I had a great romp together. On Friday his restless head, with its bright blue eyes and tangled golden hair, tossed all day upon his pillow. On Saturday night the fifteenth, I carried him here into my study, and laid his cold still body here where I write. Here too on Sunday night came his mother and I to that holy leave-taking.
My boy is gone, but in a higher and better sense than was in my mind when I wrote four years ago what stands above – I feel that my fancy has been fulfilled. I say heartily and without bitterness–Amen, so let it be.
The Queen’s Canon Rev. Charles Kingsley wrote a letter of condolence to Huxley, gently suggesting that he reconsider his agnosticism and accept the consolations of faith in his time of loss. Huxley’s equally gentle response to Kingsley is the most moving testament to intellectual integrity I have ever read. An excerpt:
September 23, 1860
My dear Kingsley –I cannot sufficiently thank you, both on my wife’s account and my own, for your long and frank letter, and for all the hearty sympathy which it exhibits–and Mrs. Kingsley will, I hope, believe that we are no less sensible of her kind thought of us. To myself your letter was especially valuable, as it touched upon what I thought even more than upon what I said in my letter to you.
My convictions, positive and negative, on all the matters of which you speak, are of long and slow growth and are firmly rooted. But the great blow which fell upon me seemed to stir them to their foundation, and had I lived a couple of centuries earlier I could have fancied a devil scoffing at me and them–and asking me what profit it was to have stripped myself of the hopes and consolations of the mass of mankind? To which my only reply was and is—Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie….
I neither deny nor affirm the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing in it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it.
Pray understand that I have no a priori objections to the doctrine. No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble himself about a priori difficulties. Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing anything else, and I will believe that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force, or the indestructibility of matter. Whoso clearly appreciates all that is implied in the falling of a stone can have no difficulty about any doctrine simply on account of its marvellousness. But the longer I live, the more obvious it is to me that the most sacred act of a man’s life is to say and to feel, “I believe such and such to be true.”
All the greatest rewards and all the heaviest penalties of existence cling about that act. The universe is one and the same throughout; and if the condition of my success in unravelling some little difficulty of anatomy or physiology is that I shall rigorously refuse to put faith in that which does not rest on sufficient evidence, I cannot believe that the great mysteries of existence will be laid open to me on other terms. It is no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions. I dare not if I would.
Measured by this standard, what becomes of the doctrine of immortality?
You rest in your strong conviction of your personal existence, and in the instinct of the persistence of that existence which is so strong in you as in most men.
To me this is as nothing. That my personality is the surest thing I know–may be true. But the attempt to conceive what it is leads me into mere verbal subtleties.
I cannot conceive of my personality as a thing apart from the phenomena of my life. When I try to form such a conception I discover that, as Coleridge would have said, I only hypostatise a word, and it alters nothing if, with Fichte, I suppose the universe to be nothing but a manifestation of my personality. I am neither more nor less eternal than I was before.
Surely it must be plain that an ingenious man could speculate without end on both sides, and find analogies for all his dreams. Nor does it help me to tell me that the aspirations of mankind–that my own highest aspirations even–lead me towards the doctrine of immortality. I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.
Science has taught to me the opposite lesson. She warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile.
My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations.
Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.
As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, “If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alternative involved a blasphemy against all that was best and noblest in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What! because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge.
_________________________________ Sit down before fact as a little child,
be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads,
or you shall learn nothing.
I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind
since I have resolved at all risks to do this._________________________________
If at this moment I am not a worn-out, debauched, useless carcass of a man, if it has been or will be my fate to advance the cause of science, if I feel that I have a shadow of a claim on the love of those about me, if in the supreme moment when I looked down into my boy’s grave my sorrow was full of submission and without bitterness, it is because these agencies have worked upon me, and not because I have ever cared whether my poor personality shall remain distinct for ever from the All from whence it came and whither it goes.
And thus, my dear Kingsley, you will understand what my position is. I may be quite wrong, and in that case I know I shall have to pay the penalty for being wrong. But I can only say with Luther, “Gott helfe mir, Ich kann nichts anders.” [“God help me, I cannot do otherwise.”]
I know right well that 99 out of 100 of my fellows would call me atheist, infidel, and all the other usual hard names. As our laws stand, if the lowest thief steals my coat, my evidence (my opinions being known) would not be received against him.
But I cannot help it. One thing people shall not call me with justice and that is—a liar. As you say of yourself, I too feel that I lack courage; but if ever the occasion arises when I am bound to speak, I will not shame my boy.
I have spoken more openly and distinctly to you than I ever have to any human being except my wife.
If you can show me that I err in premises or conclusion, I am ready to give up these as I would any other theories. But at any rate you will do me the justice to believe that I have not reached my conclusions without the care befitting the momentous nature of the problems involved.
I don’t profess to understand the logic of yourself, Maurice, and the rest of your school, but I have always said I would swear by your truthfulness and sincerity, and that good must come of your efforts. The more plain this was to me, however, the more obvious the necessity to let you see where the men of science are driving, and it has often been in my mind to write to you before.
If I have spoken too plainly anywhere, or too abruptly, pardon me, and do the like to me.
My wife thanks you very much for your volume of sermons. Ever yours very faithfully,TH Huxley
[The complete text is available here.]
can death give birth to wonder? (revised)
[NOTE: In preparing the following blog entry, I fell prey to a classic critical thinking error that goes by several names: “selective reporting,” “confirmation bias,” and “being an idiot.” Though the first several paragraphs are impeccably sound, the section on the Woodward paper is, unfortunately, complete rubbish. I say ‘unfortunately’ because it would have been fascinating if true. Ahh, but that’s how we monkeys always step in it, isn’t it now? I’ll leave the post up as a monument to my shortcomings and prepare another post about the specific way in which I misled myself.]
_______________
You’ve probably seen the studies confirming the low frequency of religious belief among scientists, and the fact that the most eminent scientists are the least likely to believe in a personal God. Very interesting, and not surprising. Uncertainty would have been profoundly maladaptive for most of our species history. The religious impulse is an understandable response to the human need to know, or at least to feel that you do. Once you find a (much) better way to achieve confidence in your conclusions, one of the main incentives for religiosity loses its appeal.
Psychologist James Leuba was apparently the first to ask scientists the belief question in a controlled context. In 1914, Leuba surveyed 1,000 randomly-selected scientists and found that 58 percent expressed disbelief in the existence of God. Among the 400 “greater” scientists in his sample, the figure was around 70 percent.1 Leuba repeated his survey in 1934 and found that the percentages had increased, with 67 percent of scientists overall and 85 percent of the “eminent” group expressing religious disbelief.2
The Larson and Witham study of 1998 returned to the “eminent” group, surveying members of the National Academy of Sciences and finding religious disbelief at 93 percent. All sorts of interesting stats within that study: NAS mathematicians are the most likely to believe (about 15 percent), while biologists were least likely (5.5 percent).
[Here’s where the nonsense begins. Avert your eyes.]
But I recently came across a related statistic about scientists that, given my own background, ranks as the single most thought-provoking stat I have ever seen.
As I’ve mentioned before, my dad died when I was thirteen. It was, and continues to be, the defining event in my life, the beginning of my deepest and most honest thinking about the world and my place in it. My grief was instantly matched by a profound sense of wonder and a consuming curiosity. It was the start of the intensive wondering and questioning that led me (among other things) to reject religious answers on the way to real ones.
Now I learn that the loss of a parent shows a robust correlation to an interest in science. [Not.] A study by behavioral scientist William Woodward was published in the July 1974 issue of Science Studies. The title, “Scientific Genius and Loss of a Parent,” hints at the statistic that caught my attention. About 5 percent of Americans lose a parent before the age of 18. Among eminent scientists, however, that number is higher. Much higher.
According to the study, 39.6 percent of top scientists experienced the death of a parent while growing up—eight times the average.
Let’s hope my kids can achieve the same thirst for knowledge some other way.
Many parents see the contemplation of death as a singular horror, something from which their children should be protected. If nothing else, this statistic suggests that an early encounter with the most profound fact of our existence can inspire a revolution in thought, a whole new orientation to the world — and perhaps a completely different path through it.
[More later.]
_____________________
1 Leuba, J. H. The Belief in God and Immortality: A Psychological, Anthropological and Statistical Study (Sherman, French & Co., Boston, 1916).
2 Leuba, J. H. Harper’s Magazine 169, 291-300 (1934).
3Larson, E. J. & Witham, L. Nature 386, 435-436 (1997).
4Woodward, William R. Scientific Genius and Loss of a Parent, in Science Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Jul., 1974), pp. 265-277.
wondrous strange
- March 17, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In My kids, Parenting, Science, wonder
3
The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature… It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of twentieth-century science to the human intellect.
Lewis Thomas
Connor (12) was studying for a science quiz on cells, muttering about eukaryotes and pseudopods and such, like it was the driest of all possible subjects. Life…*yawn*
I was working on a way to liven it up for him when I realized, to my amazement, that I had never shared with him (or with you, as far as I remember) one of my favorite science videos. It’s an award-winning computer animation of the internal workings of a single white blood cell, animated by the good folks at Xvivo:
Connor lit up like a, like a…like a seventh grader who suddenly found his homework interesting.
Well…more interesting, anyway.
_________________________
[N.B. Great book with the same effect: Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher]
IMAGINE: a science-literate president
Official U.S. policy on global warming
My 12-year-old son Connor asked a heartbreaking question last week: “Is our next president going to be a good one?”
His tone was pleading, and I knew what he meant. From the time he was five, Connor has known only one president. Please don’t make me type the name. During that time, Connor has developed a love of science, a deep concern for others and a passion for preserving the Earth. Connor is an optimist and works hard to be part of the solution. He has donated money to save several acres of rainforest and used a Barnes & Noble giftcard received at Krismas to buy An Inconvenient Truth. His long-term goal is to start an engineering company that creates a device that eats greenhouse gases. He recently resumed a long-delayed project to design a website to encourage donations to charity. In the meantime, he spends untold hours on the website Free Rice earning rice for the hungry, twenty grains at a time.
I love and admire him for all of this. He’s my hero and my conscience in many, many ways.
Because people like me did too little to prevent it, Connor has grown up under a presidency of surpassing, mind-numbing ignorance and deeply screwed-up values. Assuming two terms for the next president, next November’s election may well decide who sits in the White House throughout his high school and college years, making policies that affect global warming, stem cell research, educational policies, and countless other things that he cares about very deeply. There are so many things I hope for in our next executive. But at minimum, I would like my boy to experience life under a president who is scientifically literate.
Science is at or near the heart of nearly every major issue facing the world community. We cannot afford to have another U.S. president as thunderously and willfully ignorant of science as the current one. The planet can’t afford it. Nor can my son’s fragile optimism.
EMBRYONIC STEM CELL
Scientific literacy should be a central issue in the upcoming election. We need to know whether these candidates have a working knowledge of the basics. To that end, a group of concerned scientists and activists has begun a call for the inclusion in the current election cycle of a debate on science and technology:
A Call for a Presidential Debate on Science and Technology
Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.
Add your name to the petition here.
Read the article “Let’s Have a Presidential Debate on Science” at Salon.com.
branch-on-ground
Acacia tree at sunset, Laikipia Plateau, Kenya
DELANEY (6, after ten silent seconds staring at our bathroom scale): I wonder how people in places like Africa and India weigh themselves if they don’t have scales.
DAD: Hm. I never even thought about that. Any ideas?
(Five seconds pass.)
DELANEY: I know! They could sit on a long tree branch and see how far down it bends.
DAD (recombing his hair): Holy cow, Lane. That would totally work.
ERIN (9): And they could say, “‘I weigh branch-halfway-down. How about you?’ And the other guy says, ‘I ate too much. I weigh branch-on-ground.'”
(Laughter.)
DELANEY: Or they could put carvings on the tree trunk to see how far down it goes.
This kid slays me on a daily basis. She recognized a problem, proposed a workable solution, and refined it, all within sixty seconds. I’m pretty sure that my own scientific investigations at the age of six were limited to which nostril produced the best-tasting boogers.1
___________________________
1Left side, by a mile — though further research is necessary.
NOVA–Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 8-10 PM (on most PBS stations)
JUDGMENT DAY: INTELLIGENT DESIGN ON TRIAL
Q&A with Paula S. Apsell, Senior Executive Producer of NOVA
Q: This program tackles a contentious issue for many people, particularly for many devout Christians. Why did NOVA and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Productions, your coproducer, take it on?
Apsell: Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial is in many ways a hornet’s nest. And we had to think long and hard before we decided to take it on. I think the real reason that we made that decision is because evolution is the foundation of the biological sciences. As Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the great biologists of the 20th century, once said, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”
In 2004, the Dover, Pennsylvania school board established a policy that science teachers would have to read a statement to biology students suggesting that there is an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution called intelligent design. Intelligent design, or ID, claims that certain features of life are too complex to have evolved naturally, and therefore must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The Dover high school science teachers refused to comply with the policy, refused to read the statement. And parents opposed to the school board’s actions filed a lawsuit in federal court.
The trial that followed was fascinating. It was like a primer, like a biology textbook. Some of the nation’s best biologists testified. When I began delving into the case, it was clear that both the trial and the issue were perfect subjects for NOVA.
Q: But why would a science series cover a court case?
Apsell: This is not just any case; it’s an historic case as well as a critical science lesson. Through six weeks of expert testimony, the case provided a crash course in modern evolutionary science, and it really hit home just how firmly established evolutionary theory is. The case also explored the very nature of science—how science is defined. Perhaps most importantly, the trial had great potential for altering science education and the public understanding of science.
Dover’s lawyers tried to argue that ID is science and, therefore, that teaching it does not violate the principle of the separation of church and state in the Establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. At the end of the trial, Judge John Jones issued a 139-page verdict supporting the teaching of evolution and characterizing intelligent design as a religious idea with no place in the science classroom. It was a landmark decision, all the more so because Judge Jones was appointed by President Bush and nominated by Republican Senator Rick Santorum.
If the decision had gone the other way, it could have had dire consequences for science education in this country. We know that state boards of education in Kansas and Ohio were considering changing science standards and curriculums to accommodate intelligent design, and they since have decided against it in the wake of this verdict.
deep family
- October 16, 2007
- By Dale McGowan
- In Parenting, Science, wonder
- 2
Deena at The Descent of Mills wrote an *exquisite* and wonder-inducing post very (very!) shortly after bringing her daughter Kaia into the world. Those unfortunates out there who find a scientifically-informed worldview ‘cold’ or ‘reductionist’ or ‘blah blah blah,’ be forewarned: this is your worst nightmare. As for the rest of us, prepare for a real privilege:
Introducing Kaia Elizabeth Mills, latest in a long line of carbon-based lifeforms. Kaia traces her ancestry back to an unnamed protoplasmic replicator which lived about four billion years ago. Since inventing sex about 2.5 billion years ago, every member of Kaia’s clan has had not one but two burstingly proud parents.
Among that replicator’s descendants, most remain single-celled. Kaia’s ancestors learned cooperation and have been massively multi-cellular for countless generations. When born, Kaia herself contained 8lb 6oz (3800g) of microscopic cells and was 55.5 cm (22 inches) in length.
One of several branches of the family who have (independently) developed sight, Kaia gazes at the world through deep blue eyes.
Thanks to a relatively recent family development (mammals, 247 million years ago), Kaia spent the first nine months of her development as part of her mother’s body, and so the family have opted to celebrate the moment of her emergence from that body as her “Birth Day” – six minutes past noon on the 28th of September 2007.
Though Kaia’s family are a relatively hairless part of the ape clan, she was born with her hominid cephalus covered in rich dark hair.
(My mind immediately went to my Aunt Marilyn who seriously blew a fuse when my mother, upon the birth of my little brother, said, “He looks like a little monkey!” Marilyn would be spinning in her grave at Deena’s post, if she weren’t still alive.)
I can’t help picturing that Deena is writing from the middle-distant future, from a time when we’ve suddenly awakened to the inspiration all around us and stopped insisting that Story X or Fable Y must be true for life to be endured. The wonder of the real world is such that we’ll never be able to adequately grasp and express it. But ohhh, how fun it is to try!
Kaia’s dad, by the way, is Friendly Humanist Tim Mills. Read Deena’s complete post here, with pix!
[For the origin and meaning of Kaia’s lovely name, visit this page. While you’re there, enjoy the Y-axis on the frequency chart provided, which must surely mean something.]
The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme–a blogging and scientific experiment
Let me start this post by agreeing with Leslie’s Blog: it made my head hurt to figure it out. To which I say: Woohoo! It hurts so good! Stop it some more!
This is a memetic experiment started by PZ Myers at the unbearably great Pharyngula blog. Bloggers receive the instructions from other bloggers and are permitted to mutate the provided memes within certain guidelines, then pass them on to other bloggers. (That’s the act of reproduction. Don’t watch that part, for decency’s sake.) So here goes:
________________________________
THE RULES
There is a set of questions below, all of the form , “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.
Copy the questions. Before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
> You can leave them exactly as is.
> You can delete any one question.
> You can mutate either the genre, medium or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best timetravel novel in SF/ Fantasy is…” to “The best timetravel novel in Westerns is…” , or ”the best timetravel movie in SF/Fantasy is…, or ”The best Romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”
> You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.
> You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.
Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions.
Please do include a link back to the ‘parent’ blog you got them from, (e.g. THE MEMING OF LIFE), to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.
Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers.
Remember though: your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate, and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.
THE LINEAGE
My great-grandparent is Pharyngula.
My grandparent is The Flying Trilobite.
My mommy is Leslie’s Blog.
——————————————————————-
THE MUTATING MEME
The Flying Trilobite’s version is first. Leslie’s mutation is next. Mine is last.
The Flying Trilobite says:
*The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is: Hyperion by Dan Simmons.
*The best romantic movie in scientific dystopias is: Gattaca (1997)
*The best sexy song in rock is: #1 Crush by Garbage from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet soundtrack
*The best cult novel in Canadian fiction is: JPod by Douglas Coupland (2006)
——————————————————————–
Leslie’s Blog mutated it to:
*The best timetravel television in SF/Fantasy is: Heroes
*The best romantic movie in scientific dystopia is: THX 1138
*The best sexy song in traditional is: “Chan Chan” by the Buena Vista Social Club
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
THE MEMING OF LIFE’s mutation:
*The best romantic movie in scientific dystopia is: THX 1138
*The best sexy song in traditional is: “Chan Chan” by the Buena Vista Social Club
*The best satirical movie in comedy is: Life of Brian
As for inviting other bloggers to reproduce with me…
I’m curious to know whether an incest taboo exists, or should exist, in memetics as in genetics. To that end, I hereby turn around and stick my log-in my mother:
…and blog-the-casbah with Grampa:
…and pharyngulate my great-granddaddy! (Well it SOUNDS dirty, anyway)
[N.B. I do have a hypothesis about memetic incest: I think it will turn out just as unadvisable as genetic incest. I won’t say why until I see if I’m right…]
Just for sport, let’s invite the neighbors in, making it an eightsome:
Hmm…maybe The Friendly Atheist would be interested in taking in my hard post…
As for the Friendly Humanist— he’s a new dad. Too tired for sex.
Sex, Genes & Evolution does it bloggy style!
As for from Archaea to Zeaxanthol…well, that’s a mouthful. Which doesn’t lend itself to reproduction.
[Ay yi yi! Remember when this was a family-friendly blog?]
for your viewing pleasure
CONNOR ATOP BRAILES HILL, OXFORDSHIRE, OCTOBER 2004
Two new feature pages have been added here at The Meming of Life:
1. TEN WONDERFULL THINGS
I’ve grappled with the problem of how best to present links of interest. Blogrolls are fine, but short ones are incomplete and long ones make my eyes cross.
My solution is TEN WONDERFULL THINGS, an ever-evolving list of links to (always only) ten wonder-full things that relate in some way to the topics explored in the Meming of Life: parenting, the secular life, wonder, fun, sex, death, questions, kids, philosophy, humor, Atlanta, science, England, books, monkeys…things like that. No particular order. Visit often as the list slowly morphs.
2. I’M *SO* GLAD YOU ASKED
Wondering and questioning are the heart and soul of secular parenting. I’M *SO* GLAD YOU ASKED is a blog within a blog listing some of the questions and hypotheses my kids — Connor (now 12), Erin (now 9), and Delaney (now 5) — have come out with over the years. Though this page is primarily a personal family record, I’ve obviously invited visitors in, so I’ll try not to include the kind of cutesy-wootsey questions only a parent could love. I’m including it in the blogworks here because the questioning environment we build for our children is among the most important influences on their intellectual development. I’m endlessly fascinated by these questions and always thinking about how best to encourage them.
So no, in case the title led you to believe this was an FAQ, it is not. These Q’s are not frequently asked. Each tends to appear only once, giving us just that one chance to get it right, one chance to react in a way that nurtures and encourages the next question, and the next.
These are not dimly-remembered paraphrases. Each was written down within three minutes of being said. My hope in creating this page is to capture just a little of the electric thrill I get from being the father of three bighearted and curious kids who’ve never heard of such a thing as an unaskable question.
Click on the links in the upper left of the blog’s home page.
