Embrace logic to improve both education and society
This is part of a series called Focal Point, in which we ask a range of Harvard faculty members to answer the same question. Focal Point Mona Weissmark Question: If you were to write a letter to your students, what would you want them to know? The most important lesson I learned — and now share with my students — came from Professor Brendan Maher at Harvard. Maher taught me to cast a cold eye on the final truth. And he taught me to be wary of accepting other people’s ideas about the truth, including those from leading intellectual authorities. His core course, “Conceptions of Human Nature,” focused on critically examining different viewpoints of human nature by thinkers like Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner, E.O. Wilson, and Karl Marx. By the end of the semester, there were always students who said, “OK, Professor Maher, we know what’s wrong with these viewpoints. Now which one is right?” With...