John G. Messerly's Blog, page 140

On Writing Well

On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction



The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

The two most important books that influenced me on writing are Strunk & White’s classic The Elements of Style and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. I have also been influenced by reading wonderful prose stylists like Bertrand Russell and Will Durant. Finally I was heavily influenced by a graduate school mentor William Charron, who forced me to rewrite my master’s thesis about ten times. I sometimes think he overdid it–seeking perfection in one’s writing causes paralysis–but he taught me the invaluable lesson of rewriting, which is the single best secret to good writing that I know of.

Unfortunately the time constraints of researching and writing a daily blog make this impossible. I certainly reread my posts and make quick changes before publication, but I don’t have the time for the ten or twenty rewrites that would be necessary for really good prose. So it’s a tradeoff. I sometimes substitute quantity for quality, but I think there is value in not overanalyzing a topic too. Stream of consciousness writing, being less constrained than obsessive rewriting, is also more revelatory of one’s true feelings.

Recently I read the interview about writing with psychologist Steven Pinker at edge.org. Pinker reasons that writing is a psychological phenomenon, “a way that one mind can cause ideas to happen in another mind,.” But writing is “cognitively unnatural,” according to Pinker. Until the last few millennia, for almost the entire time there have been modern human beings, no one wrote anything. In fact it is an odd way to communicate. You don’t see your audience,  you don’t know who they are or what they know, and they don’t ask you questions. It is so different from face to face conversation.

Pinker thinks we write to draw another’s attention to something. “When you write … you should pretend that you, the writer, see something in the world that’s interesting, and that you’re directing the attention of your reader to that thing.” This may seem obvious but consider how much writing is done to impress, like academic writing, or to protect oneself, like legal jargon. So while we write for ourselves–to learn and understand–we surely write for our audience too. Not to impress them, perform for them, protect ourselves, or shove dogma down their throat–but to see new things with them. To point out things that both the writer and the reader may have missed.

Leaving a small part of myself after I am gone–a legacy if you will of the best of me–motivates my writing. It’s not as good as real immortality, and I may still get a cryonics policy, but it is something. To leave a small part of yourself in this electronic cloud. To leave a soft whisper in the air.

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Friendship is Another Reason to Work

I received this perceptive comment from a reader regarding yesterday’s post about fulfilling work: “I would add something to what accounts for meaningful work. I think part of it is having a supportive workplace culture and environment, and people who you enjoy being around for 8 hours of the day. My 2 cents!”

What a great contribution to the discussion that 2 cents is. The point about working with people you like is an important one that I didn’t mention. Relationships are one of the ways that Victor Frankl says we find meaning and we can find these at work. This is another benefit of work and one of the most important ones. Thanks to the reader for calling my attention to it. And it also applies to leisure. Hiking or golfing may be fun, but not if we are doing these things with people we don’t like. I recently wrote about what a terrible experience I had golfing with a drunk. On the other hand I had a job at a paint factory for a few months while working my way through college about 40 years ago. A truly terrible job. Dangerous, low paying, and dirty beyond description. I amazed I can think at all given all the solvents I inhaled. But I endured for a while because I talked philosophy with a colleague whom I really liked. Even terrible work can be somewhat redeemed by friendship.

So again thanks to the reader for pointing out my omission. Friendship is one of the greatest potential benefits of work.

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Fulfilling Work

How to Find Fulfilling Work (The School of Life)

My Previous Advice – One of the most difficult things tasks for most of us is finding fulfilling (paid) work in our modern economic system. (If you don’t have this problem fine, but many people do.) I addressed this topic previously in my most viewed blog post to date: “Should You Do What You Love?” (It had over 10,000 views, generating many comments on my site and on Reddit. Evidently it is a topic of interest.) Here was my conclusion:

I agree with Marino that doing our duty, even if it doesn’t make us happy, is admirable. And I agree with Tokumitsu and Hanson that elitists, who often do the most interesting work, fail to value more mundane work. But I think that Linsenmayer makes the most important point. We need a new economic system–one where we can develop our talents and actualize our potential. Most of us are too good for the work we do, not because we are better than others, but because the work available in our current system is not good enough for any of us. (I have written about his previously.)

Still we do not live in an ideal world. So what practical counsel do we give others, in our current time and place? Unfortunately my advice is dull and unremarkable, like so much of the available work. For now the best recommendation is something like: do the least objectionable/most satisfying work available given your options. That we can’t say more reveals the gap between the real and the ideal; it is symptomatic of a flawed society. Perhaps working to change the world so that people can engage in satisfying work is the most meaningful work of all.

More Thoughts - First a disclaimer. I am not an expert on the topic of satisfying work and I lack the time for a thorough investigation of the topic. But social science research must have been done on what work people generally find fulfilling, on the difference between work and leisure activities; on work and its compatibility with personality profiles like the Big 5, and related topics. Those interested should consult this research.  With these caveats in place, here are a few reflections.

What is work? – It is activity, usually engaged in for the money which buys the things we need to survive. We typically contrast work with leisure, which is activity or inactivity usually engaged in, not for money, but for enjoyment. Of course what we call work activity or leisure activity might conflict or coincide. We might engage in activities we enjoy and make money in the process–our work and our leisure activities may coincide. Yet they might conflict too. We might enjoy playing golf and hate being a lawyer–engaging in the latter for the sole purpose of making money to engage in the former. But surely most of us in the first world, when confronted with a countless variety of activities in which to engage, can find something we (somewhat) enjoy that also makes money.

Are We Lucky to Have a Job? – This is a tough question. For those in the world who subsist on less that $2 a day–about half the world’s population–any work that paid almost anything would seem to be a blessing. Desperate people might consider themselves lucky to make a few thousand dollars a year picking fruit all day in the hot sun. From the perspective of those in poverty, those who would reject a $100,000 a year job (in US dollars) in good working conditions because it wasn’t satisfying enough, would elicit no sympathy. (They might even considered such individuals entitled.) Nor would those who insist on satisfying work elicit sympathy from full-time workers making the USA minimum wage, which typically involves unfulfilling work. Still it is hard to tell someone they should be satisfied with work they don’t find satisfying. By all means if the opportunity presents itself, and you would not hurt yourself or others, accept more fulfilling work.

Is the World Economic System Immoral? – One might advance a stronger argument against working at all–that participating in the world’s economic system is intrinsically immoral. If participating in an economic system they deem unjust violates one’s conscience, then perhaps they shouldn’t do that work. Of course they have to ask themselves whether they really believe this or whether it is an excuse to avoid doing something they don’t like. But if it is the former, then possibly they shouldn’t violate their conscience.

I say possibly because there are all sorts of reasons to do what you don’t want to do, or even do what you think is immoral. As for doing what you don’t want to, the idea of duty has a long history as a significant concept in moral philosophy that dates back at least to the Stoics. And even if you think the economic system is immoral you might still want to participate in it to feed your family. Surely there is also something immoral about allowing your family to starve, not have adequate nutrition, not live in a good neighborhood or get a good education. Especially when you have the ability to avoid such outcomes.

Moreover, you really don’t know that participating in an imperfect world economic system is immoral. There is substance to the counter argument that participation in the world’s economic system, despite its flaws, has merit. For surely something about that system has contributed positively to the world we now live in. And what kind of world is that? It is one in which more people live longer and more fulfilling lives while doing reasonably satisfying work than at any time in human history. (If you don’t believe this, take your family back to Europe in the Middle Ages or ancient Greece or Rome or the plains of Africa where the average lifespan was vanishingly short, where mothers died in childbirth, children died en masse of disease, and there was little time for high cultural achievements like art, literature, music, philosophy, and science.)

Now the extent to which these positive transformations were caused by economic systems is debatable–perhaps science and technology played a more important role in driving human history. (I think they did.) But economics, technology, and other elements of culture interact. It is hard to disentangle which have played the most important role in leading to the better world we now live in. But our long journey–from the agricultural revolution, which produced the excess food which allowed for priests, philosophers, artisans and scientists; to the industrial revolution, which mass-produced the technology that transformed the world; to the current technological revolution, which will transform reality in ways as yet unimaginable–together have produced a better world. And some part of that transformation must have been played by commerce, business, lending, and money. I don’t possess the wherewithal to defend this argument in detail, but these comments should at least plant doubt in the minds of those who assume that the modern economic system is intrinsically immoral. It is easy to be influenced by half-true memes.

Now I am not an apologist for predatory capitalism, the profit motive, or the genocide and slavery which it was and still is associated. I don’t know on balance if it is a good or bad thing. I just know that the truth about such issues is complex. What part does our evolutionary biology play and what part do the various elements of culture play in our imperfect world? Again, I don’t know. But given the complexity of the issue it would be foolish to not participate in the system as best we can. (There are many ways to do this which I’ll describe below.) In fact, other than opting out of life entirely, it isn’t possible to live disentangled from the world’s economy.  Even Thoreau, determined to live according to his conscience and often far from the world said, “I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.” He wanted to change the world, but had to make peace with it too. 

What work is fulfilling? – In my own life reading, writing, thinking and teaching philosophy were activities that, for the most part, I enjoyed. Of course nothing is perfect. I had students over the years that I strongly disliked, department chairs who were tyrants, and I’ve read books and took classes that I wasn’t thrilled about. (Oh, those mandatory medieval philosophy classes–how little I remember you, St. Bonaventure!) Surely many feel similarly about being a physician, nurse, biologist, economist, public policy expert or psychologist–not perfect jobs in a perfect world, but satisfying nonetheless. And I’m not prejudice toward white-collar jobs either. There are plumbers, electricians, carpenters and others who feel the same way–they may not have perfect jobs, but they find satisfaction in the honest work that feeds their families. (One of my graduate student friends who was good at fixing things said he found working with his hands as satisfying as philosophy–and he was the best philosopher in our program.) I also found raising my children to be some of the most satisfying work I did. I enjoyed every moment of taking them to gymnastics and football games, playing softball and basketball with them, and of course discussing philosophy with them.

What work if fulling for me? - Obviously this depends on one’s personality traits, talents, psychology, opportunities, culture, history, genes and more. I mentioned the Big 5 personality test earlier and I’m sure there is information about one’s personality profile and fulfilling work. (There are multiple books about the connection between one’s Myers-Briggs profile and job satisfaction, but as I understand it, the Big 5 is the more scientific test.)

Again for most of us, if we are reasonably intelligent, physically healthy, and lucky enough to live in a thriving economy and not to have to work for minimum (virtual slave) wages in those economies, then there are a plethora of choices. (Of course overchoice does makes choosing tougher.) In the end all we can do is look at the available choices–assuming we are lucky enough to have them–and choose. It probably doesn’t matter much what we  choose, as long as it is something that contributes ever so slightly to keeping civilization going. (We might experience existential guilt by working, thinking that we are denying others the opportunity, but we must value ourselves too. And we must avoid what the Dalai Lama calls “sloppy sympathy,” feeling bad for others. Such sentiments are worthless. Much better to use your skill, go out in the world, and help someone.)

Playing Our Small Role – In the end we are small creatures and the universe is big. We can’t change the whole world but we can influence it through our interaction with those closest to us, finding joy in the process. We may not change the world by administering to the sick as doctors or nurses or psychologists, or by installing someone’s dishwasher or cleaning their teeth or keeping their internet running. We may not even change it by caring lovingly for our children. But the recipients of such labors may find your work significant indeed. For they received medical care or had someone to talk to or had their teeth cleaned. Or they met an old friend on the internet. Or they don’t have to go to the laundromat anymore. Or they grew up to be the kind of functioning adult this world so desperately needs because of that loving parental care. These may all be small things, but if they are not important, nothing is.

Perhaps then it is the sum total of our labors that makes us large. Our labors are not always sexy, but they are necessary to bring about a better future. All those mothers who cared for children and fathers who worked to support them, all those plumbers and doctors and nurses and teachers and firefighters and coaches and plumbers doing their little part in the cosmic dance. All of them recognizing what VictorFrankl  taught, that productive work is a constitutive element of a meaningful life.

Will Durant on the Meaning of Life – I’ll let my friend Will Durant share some final words on working and the meaning of life. I respect his views on such matters like no others.

The meaning of life, then, must lie within itself … it must be sought in life’s own instinctive cravings and natural fulfillments. Why, for example, should we ask for an ulterior meaning to vitality and health? … If you are sick beyond cure I will grant you viaticum, and let you die … But if you are well—if you can stand on your legs and digest your food—forget your whining, and shout your gratitude to the sun.

The simplest meaning of life then is joy—the exhilaration of experience itself, of physical well-being; sheer satisfaction of muscle and sense, of palate and ear and eye. If the child is happier than the man it is because it has more body and less soul, and understands that nature comes before philosophy; it asks for no further meaning to its arms and legs than their abounding use … Even if life had no meaning except for its moments of beauty … that would be enough; this plodding thru the rain, or fighting the wind, or tramping the snow under sun, or watching the twilight turn into night, is reason a-plenty for loving life.

Do not be so ungrateful about love … to the attachment of friends and mates who have gone hand in hand through much hell, some purgatory, and a little heaven, and have been soldered into unity by being burned together in the flame of life. I know such mates or comrades quarrel regularly, and get upon each other’s nerves; but there is ample recompense for that in the unconscious consciousness that someone is interested in you, depends upon you, exaggerates you, and is waiting to meet you at the station. Solitude is worse than war.

I note that those who are cooperating parts of a whole do not despond; the despised “yokel” playing ball with his fellows in the lot is happier than these isolated thinkers, who stand aside from the game of life and degenerate through the separation … If we think of ourselves as part of a living … group, we shall find life a little fuller … For to give life a meaning one must have a purpose larger and more enduring than one’s self.

If … a thing has significance only through its relation as part to a larger whole, then, though we cannot give a metaphysical and universal meaning to all life in general, we can say of any life in the particular that its meaning lies in its relation to something larger than itself … ask the father of sons and daughters “What is the meaning of life?” and he will answer you very simply: “Feeding our family.”

Postscript - From 1932 till 1981 my father cut meat. And my father-in-law cut meat for about 50 years too. Now I don’t eat meat for moral, physiological, and environmental reasons. It’s bad for animals, bad for your health, and bad for the planet. But that meat cutting is partly responsible for this blog. No, one doesn’t have to be a meat cutter, but there are things we can do to make small contributions to this world. And for those with the skill and the intelligence and the opportunity to contribute, don’t waste it. Go out there and work for those few people who fall within your orbit. If you do, you will have been a success, and both you and the world will be better off for it. Whatever you do, don’t deny the world your beautiful soul.

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All the quotes are taken from Will Durant’s On the Meaning of Life, (New York: Long & Smith,  1932) 124-28.

 

 

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Richard Cory

I recently posted Edward Arlington Robinson’s poem, “Dear Friends.” It reminded me of a poem of his I encountered in high school, “Richard Cory.” I find the poems connected, as both suggest that worldly acclaim is not what’s most important. 

“Richard Cory”

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked; 
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich – yes, richer than a king -
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; 
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head. 

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The Global Brain

I began using analytical tools in February 2014 to track my readership. I have now exceeded 50,000 page views! (About 40,000 visitors.) I would like to thank all the readers, especially my regular readers. I would also like to thank those who take the time to write responses, all of which I read and reflect upon.

And thanks to the engineers and computer scientists who designed and maintain the various parts of the  world-wide web. It amazes me that I reach people all around the globe, as my site stats confirm. Science and technology, the true bringers of miracles, are creating a global brain.

The global brain is a conceptualization of the worldwide network formed by all the people on this planet together with the information and communication technologies that connect them into an intelligent, self-organizing system. As the internet becomes faster, more intelligent, and more encompassing, it increasingly ties its users together into a single information processing system, which functions like a nervous system for the planet Earth. The intelligence of this network is collective or distributed: it is not centralized or localized in any particular individual, organization or computer system. It rather emerges from the dynamic networks of interactions between its components, a property typical of complex adaptive systems.1

 “Cyberspace: The Ultimate Complex Adaptive System”. The International C2 Journal. Retrieved 25 August 2012. by Paul W. Phister Jr

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A Poem About My Work

Dear Friends

Dear friends, reproach me not for what I do,

Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say

That I am wearing half my life away

For bubble-work that only fools pursue.

And if my bubbles be too small for you,

Blow bigger then your own: the games we play

To fill the frittered minutes of a day,

Good glasses are to read the spirit through.

And whoso reads may get him some shrewd skill;

And some unprofitable scorn resign,

To praise the very thing that he deplores;

So, friends (dear friends), remember, if you will,

The shame I win for singing is all mine,

The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours.

Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) spent his childhood in a small town in Maine. His father was a prosperous merchant; his mother had been a schoolteacher. The parents were primarily interested in their two older sons and tended to ignore Edwin, though they recognized his exceptional intelligence.

Robinson studied at Harvard from 1891 to 1893 and afterward returned to Maine to stay for three years. Miserable and lonely, he moved to New York in 1895. His first volume of poems had been published while he was at home in Maine; in 1897 a second volume appeared. But he prospered neither as a poet nor as a businessman and ended by working as a checker of loads of shale during the building of the New York subway. Luckily, the president of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, found Robinson’s poetry impressive and helped him get a clerkship in the New York Customs House, where he worked until 1910.

Suddenly, with the poetic revival that preceded World War I, Robinson began to play a major role as a poet. He became widely read and exerted a strong influence on other poets, notably Robert Frost. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry three times in the 1920′s, a record exceeded only by Frost, who received the prize four times in all.

The core of Robinson’s philosophy is the belief that man’s highest duty is to develop his best attributes as fully as possible. Success is measured by the intensity and integrity of his struggle; failure consists only in a lack of effort. Robinson was most interested in people who had either failed spiritually, or who seemed failures to the world but had really succeeded in gaining spiritual wisdom.

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Note – I owe the brief biography to the site”American Poems.” The entry on Robinson can be found in full here.

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Should we take life seriously or not? Should we think of it as heavy or light? Perhaps we shouldn’t take it too seriously, enjoy the pleasures it affords, and reject all heavier philosophies of meaning. But is this solution satisfactory? This is the fundamental question posed Milan Kundera in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. (Kundera is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen. His books were banned by the Communists of Czechoslovakia until the downfall of the regime in the Velvet Revolution in 1989.)

Kundera begins his novel by pondering Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence—the notion that everything that has already happened will recur ad infinitum. Although it is hardly Nietzsche’s interpretation, Kundera remarks: “Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing.”[i]

For Kundera a life lived only once is light or unimportant; by contrast, if all recurred infinitely, a tremendous heaviness or significance would be imposed on our lives and choices. Kundera contrasts the heaviness and lightness of life as follows: “If the eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness. But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?”[ii]

Kundera answers:

the heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But … the heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes a man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.[iii]

The problem with the light life is its meaninglessness. If everything happens only once, it might as well not have happened at all. In response, all one can do is live for beauty and pleasure. Yet, paradoxically, we find the insignificance of our lives unbearable–the unbearable lightness of being. If life lacks objective meaning, we must accept nihilism, unless we act as if our actions eternally recur. But then the heaviness of our actions and choices crushes us under their weight.

Despite these conundrums the main characters in his novel who embrace the heaviness of life and love die happy, while those who live lightly suffer the unbearable lightness of being. This suggests that heaviness is better after all. Still there is no return, nothing is eternal for Kundera. And even if there were, our lives and choices would be too burdensome. Perhaps the fact that some of his characters find love is enough; but nothing matters ultimately. In the end nihilism is, for conscious beings, both true and unbearable. A heavy life is disingenuous and crushes us; a light life is unbearable.

As for me, I think we ought to consider life significant, but not too significant; light but not too light. Here it is in simple form.

Nothing matters -> life is unbearable

Everything matters -> life is unbearable

Some things matter -> life is bearable and occasionally meaningful.

Wisdom is, in large part, differentiating what matters from what doesn’t.

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[i] Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1999), 3.

[ii] Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 5.

[iii] Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 5.

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Closing Time

It has occurred to me that an individual post often may be my last statement on a given topic. I thought this when I finished my recent post on abortion, a subject I am unlikely to revisit since it bears little relationship with my main concerns–evolution, transhumanism, and the meaning of life. But how do I feel about the fact that I will never revisit a topic?

My first feeling is sadness. It is often sad when things come to an end. I will never read and think about some topic again, just like I may have heard a song on the radio for the last time or caught my last baseball. But for a thinker, to know that your thought time is up pierces heart. Why is there not enough time to find our answers? Second I feel inadequate. A lifetime is insufficient to probe the depth of some topics, and others will not be thought about at all. In the ocean of thoughts, our minds explore areas the size of atoms; from an infinite smorgasbord of ideas, we sample only a few.

So my visceral responses to endings and finitude are sadness and inadequacy. Yet the stirring words of Tennyson best capture the proper attitude:

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

I will probe the issue further in my next post with a discussion of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

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Addendum to Abortion Post

Thus have I made as it were a small globe of the intellectual world, as truly and faithfully as I could discover. ~ Francis Bacon

If it was not clear from my previous post, there are multiple arguments driving the majority of contemporary philosophers against the pro-life position–the personhood issue is just one small part of the overall case.  And I have never heard of a contemporary moral philosopher advance arguments against the personhood of Native Americans, Jews, Africans, Mexicans, gypsies, or seattle hippies. (One commenter suggested as much.) However, this argument was advanced by the Catholic Church against the people of the new world with devastatingly consequences. The disabilities issue is somewhat different. If we are talking about pre-natal testing with a positive result for severe deformities, yes, many philosophers would advocate abortion.

The argument that sometimes in the past people were wrong about personhood so they are (probably) wrong about 6 week old is specious. (Roughly the argument of a commenter.) Of course nothing I say will change anyone’s mind, especially if their friends or lives or salaries demand believing the opposite. But so many really important things to worry about–like actual people.

So I won’t say more. Again, for those interested in the philosophical consensus the literature is readily available. If one disagrees, present the opposite case and sway the philosophical majority. I’ll let any of my readers have the last word if they like without further comment.

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Hypatia, Reason, and Faith

More than 30 years ago I first heard the story of Hypatia from Carl Sagan. She was one of the last scientists to work in the great Library of Alexandria, a center of science and learning in the ancient world, and a repository for much of the world’s collective works in science and philosophy.  She was a mathematician, astronomer, physicist and head of the school of Neo-Platonic philosophy in Alexandria. There, in 415 AD, as the Roman empire disintegrated and Christianity gained power, the classical mind of the antiquity and the medieval mind of Christianity intersected–and a war between scientific rationality and religious fanaticism followed. Christianity would win and civilization would lose–the Dark Ages were born. And Hypatia would be one of its first victims.

Sagan’s account of Hypatia’s murder and its implications is extraordinarily moving.

Today the battle between superstition and science, between faith and reason, continues. It is not the religious fundamentalists who are under attack but the scientists–harassed for demonstrating the evidence for everything from climate change to evolution. What does this foretell? Will we return to a medieval world of witchcraft and sorcery? Would we become a society that discourages the young from learning science? Could we return to what Sagan called “the demon-haunted” world? (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.)

Let us hope not. Let us all be guided the twin lights which illuminate the darkness–reason and compassion.

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This column is dedicated to the scientists throughout history who have preserved and advanced our knowledge; and to Hypatia and all the oppressed woman of the world.

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