The final entry for ”Brain Week” is a video of a 2007 roundtable discussion on the topic of “Mind, Brain, and Spirituality: Toward a Biology of the Soul” featuring Martin Bergmann, Siri Hustvedt, Jaak Panksepp, David Pincus, and theolgianThandeka.

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Full disclosure: I’ve not read Warren’s fabulously successful Purpose Driven Live. There is a copy of it in our home as my wife was required to read it as part of a staff development team-building activity at the church where she works. So, perhaps I’ll get to it at some point.

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Last week someone left a plastic bag on my porch. It contained two hefty telephone directories. This yearly event used to annoy me. I have no use for phone books. If I want to find a person, company, or address I use the internet. Phone books are obsolete. Why do they go through the expense of printing and distributing them?

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The following is from the book Myths: Fact and Fiction about Teaching and Learning by Israel Galindo. How well do you know fact from fiction?

Fiction: Christopher Columbus sailed to the new world on the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

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Some time ago we posted a link to a great site called “I used to believe.” It’s a fun look at the naturally quirky world of children’s epistemology. We all used to believe something as children that we no longer do as adults. And certainly, continuing to leave behind naïve beliefs, unsophisticated notions and misunderstandings is a sign of intellectual and emotional maturity.

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The librarian and staff at our theological library have been inviting professors to lunch and conversations. My turn came last week. They are a very intelligent, nice, and helpful group of folks, as librarians tend to be. It was good to be with folks who help make my job in education and research much easier and more pleasant. During the lunch conversation I talked about the educational theory that informs my approach to teaching the education courses at the seminary, Constructivism. Which prompted the question, “So, what is Constructivism?” That’s a good question worth revisiting.

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It seems that we have a tendency of falling in love with certain concepts now and again. Some of these concepts come and go, others are more pernicious. Some concepts become popular, then wane with time or over-familiarity. What I mean by “falling in love” is that people develop an uncritical romantic notion toward the concept. They love the sound of the word or phrase, love to use it often.

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