Tag: Graduate School (home)

It took almost twenty-five years of brooding over observations in the laboratory, Mayan huts, and American homes, as well as reflection on writing in anthropology, philosophy, and history, to release me from the dogma I had been taught at Yale. The ideas indoctrinated during graduate training can limit the conceptions the mature investigator entertains. I used to begin the first meeting of my graduate seminar by telling the dozen or so students that much of what I had been taught at Yale turned out to be mistaken, so they should remain skeptical of everything I said over the next four months.

permalink source: Jerome Kagan, An Argument for Mind, 112
tags: Skepticism, Assumptions, Graduate School

There is a fable of a king who asked his wisest advisers to reduce to one word all the knowledge in the many volumes in the palace library. After years of toil the scholars brought the king a piece of paper on which was written the single word "maybe."

permalink source: Jerome Kagan, An Argument for Mind, 248
tags: Skepticism, Humility, Graduate School

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