Objectivity

Let's say you're a book review editor for a large circulation science periodical. You receive books from publishers and you look for scientists with the relevant expertise to write reviews that really engage the content of the books they are reviewing. The thing with having the relevant expertise, though, is that it may put you right in the middle of a controversy that the book you've been asked to review is probing or advancing. In other words, it may be tricky to find a reviewer who is conversant in the scientific issues the book raises and simultaneously reasonably objective about those…

"The world is full of light and life, and the true crime is not to be interested in it." A.S. Byatt "What seems a detour has a way of becoming, in time, a direct route." Richard Powers I had more fun doing this series than anything else in the past 3+ years here at the Fair. It was a unique opportunity and one that wouldn't have been possible without the blog format. I was able to start down a track and let it run as far as it would go. What seemed like a detour at times had a way of becoming a direct route so that, in the end, the meandering came to encircle epistemology, technology, and…