I haven't been too active with reading or writing blogs lately - I've been traveling and trying to get some (publishable) analyses and writing done. But I just stumbled upon a blog I hadn't seen before by Ken Weiss and Anne Buchanan. Ken Weiss is an anthropologist at Penn State. He writes a lot about evolutionary concepts (some call it theory, but the math theorists don't like that). He had a published column for a while that I was a fan of - I even assign a few of them for my evolution class.
I am a fan because Professor Weiss is an ardent pluralist, comfortable with some ambiguity, and the fact that "dichotomies" are spectra, etc. This is a general philosophy I share, and use to make sense of the world and others' arguments.
So, I look forward to reading their blog, called the Mermaid's Tale (I'm not sure I'm fond of pun-ambiguity, but I guess it works in this case). It looks prolific, I don't think I'll be able to keep up.
Thanks! We try to be pluralistic in the sense you say. We think nobody really has their finger on 'the' truth, and that progress is likely to come if we don't tie ourselves into knots trying to force everything into one mold (dogma?)
ReplyDeleteThe pun in our title is because it's in the title of our book. This was because the book has at least something of a 'trade book' audience, and the book is about similar topics.
Hi Ken,
ReplyDeleteYour book Mermaid's Tale is on my list of things I want to read. I've got to finish "A.Lincoln" first though, another person who was anti-dogmatic and pluralistic.