I just wanted to say briefly, in response to those who said I was wrong for saying that grad school is not the place to find yourself-- if you interviewed 100 professors from universities with doctoral programs, I promise, about 99 of them would say that going to grad school without a specific focus is a bad idea. It's fine if your Victorian womens lit interest turns into a early modern women's lit focus, or into a Victorian children's lit interest. It's fine if you are unsure what avenue in the broader field of molecular genetics you want to go into. But if you are going into grad school saying that you could just as easily be getting your MBA as your MFA, that is a recipe for disaster.

It's very discouraging to me that this discussion has remained centered on religion and not on science in the bigger picture. Science always calls its critics religious because religion is an easy target. It has been for about 600 years. It becomes the ultimate straw man; assume that any critique of science is religious, then set about attacking religion. When you're done, declare the contest over and science as the one and only truth.

But the fact remains that there are considerable reservations to be had with Wilson (and his fellow devouts) worldview, reservations that have nothing to do with religion. I am not a conventionally religious person. I don't know whether or not I believe in God. What I do believe in is human failure. I believe in the fact that we evolved a consciousness which helps us to organize and maneuver through our world. But there is no reason whatsoever to believe that our consciousness is capable of perfectly and unfailing ordering the world. Man is incredibly fallible and will alway be so. And science is a product of mankind, something which we created. (yes, folks.) And so it can't be perfect. It can't and it shouldn't be expected to.

Here is what I want from scientists. The modern period in art, literary, visual, or otherwise, was in many ways about the failure of art. It was about recognizing the limits of the artist and his mediums. W.B. Yeats wrote that his poems began "in the foul rag and bone shop of my heart". The literature of the modern period is sometimes referred to as the "literature of exhaustion." Unable to continue with the charade that art should, or was capable of, offering an exact reflection of the fundamental matter of life, modern authors and poets wrote about their own limitation. In modern visual art you'll often see the term "the crisis of representation." Perhaps because of the advent of photography, painters and sculptors turned away from the production of accurately rendered physical things (...green and pleasant land...) and began to create things that were matter of factly not the way things were. Because even art failed.

I've always been a humanities person, as opposed to a science person. I have great respect for people who have the skills necessary to create science; I can't. Couldn't if I tried forever. But I'm also proud to be associated with the side that has learned to accept its limits--- and continues to create. I'd like to see the same from scientists, a recognition that science is a fundamentally human enterprise, and thus can't ever be called perfect. I guess I'd just like an injection of humility.

I love this show.

I love this show.

I love this show.

The best episode (so far) is the Ocean episode from season one. The slaves music video... incredible.

It's been my experience that there is a large difference between being skilled in science and its practical application and having a good grasp of philosophy of science. What, and who, I'm criticizing isn't science or scientists in general. It's people like Wilson and Daniel Dennett and others who are part of a growing trend which says that science is the endgame of human progress. I'm afraid that it is becoming more and more popular to believe that science is the only endeavor worth taking.

My criticism is only of that perspective. Romanticism was inevitable following the Enlightenment, and it will be again.

It's hard for me to have sympathy for an overachievement. Overachievement, I'm certain, is less the product of actual achievement and more the product of having the family situation and money necessary to excel. The lie of equal opportunity is the myth from which all American myths spring. I mean, look at your dilemma now. I'm sure it sucks. Being poor, uneducated and stuck and having none of the opportunities you have is much, much worse. Perhaps you should take the time to take stock of how priveleged and spoiled you are rather than thinking about how good you are at everything.

But if you want a little advice-- don't go to grad school. Grad school is not a place to find yourself. It's not a place to explore your interests. You don't go to decide what exactly you want to go. Many people going into grad school know exactly what branch of their field they want to go into, with great specificity-- down to who the want to work with, which professor they want as their advisor, which journal article they want to write first, etc. If you get into a doctoral program and go not knowing even what field you are interested in, you will waste money (yours or the schools), get frustrated, and deprive someone more worthy of a space (which are a very valuable and rare resource.)

If you are sure grad school is for you, take the time before you apply anywhere to decide what exactly you want to do. Going in not sure if you are into creative writing or business or whatever else is a recipe for disaster.