If you think you can or can’t, you are right.
(Henry Ford)
What then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken?
(Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”)
Larry Summers, the former Clinton Treasury Department official and former president of Harvard University is, as far as I know, still in the running for Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration.
He created a mini-firestorm in 2005 when he was asked why there weren’t more women mathematicians among tenured faculty at the best research universities in the country. Summers suggested it was because of the “intrinsic” math aptitude among women.
I think we’re about to confront some changing perceptions of a lot of things, in America and in the world in general. What is an intrinsic aptitude? What do we mean when we say it’s basic-real-natural-native-built-in? For that matter, to what extent do we squander valuable resources, human or otherwise?
One particular passage in a recent American Mathematical Society study caught my attention: “In summary, some Eastern European and Asian countries frequently produce girls with profound ability in mathematical problem solving; most other countries, including the USA, do not.” To read the complete study, go to Cross-Cultural Analysis of Students with Exceptional Talent in Mathematical Problem Solving.
How do we change our perceptions—create new insights--about the way we live on the only planet we have?
I read the book review of Irene Pepperberg’s memoir (Alex & Me) this past Sunday. Alex was the quite remarkable parrot, first reported in Pepperberg’s book The Alex Studies published in 2000.
Pepperberg, a scientist who spent 30 years studying this one African gray parrot, developed a deep attachment for the bird while learning that Alex had the cognitive skills of a young child.
Researchers at Cornell University conducted a study (led by oceanographer Charles Greene), which has reported that warming trends could be the most significant in 5,000 years. It could possibly result in a major impact of the ecosystems of the Atlantic continental shelf. What might that mean to all of us? At what point do we decide it’s just not nature’s “natural” cycle? What is the intrinsic aptitude of Homo sapiens?
