Well, I’ll be in Woods Hole as of tomorrow. I’ll stop back at Krasnow a week from this Friday and then a week after that, also on a Friday. In the meantime, I intend to keep on blogging, take some spectacular pictures from my office window, looking out on Great Harbor, and hopefully connect up with some good science.
As I head out, a couple of items to think about:
First: how do we keep balanced in terms of our science portfolio? We’re not a purely neuroscience institute. Rather we’re an institute that focuses on cognitive science–from social complexity to consciousness and all the way to neurophysiology. Along the way, we also study machines–how they might emulate human minds, and how they can come to solve similar problems to the ones our own brains solve.
Second: how do we engage scientifically more with one another. How do we achieve the goal (often talked about but achieved more rarely) of talking across the disciplinary boundaries that separate us? How do we create a culture of trans-disciplinary collaboration. I’ve often said this, I’ll write it again: I think that it’s at these boundaries that the most significant discoveries are likely to be made.
I wish all of you a very pleasant August.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 