Lessons from the Edge

According to William James, ideas are rooted in our lived experience. In my case that is certainly true. A great deal of what I believe can be traced to certain experiences as described in the following excerpt from Design on the Edge (MIT Press, 2006). My views on climate change, for example, owe in part to the physical experience of the hottest and driest summer ever recorded in Arkansas. I spent the summer out of doors working on a small farm and quite literally felt the heat without relief, day after day. I learned that heat has a certain smell and feel to it that I experienced bodily for months on end. When rains and cooler weather finally arrived in late fall, that feeling came like salvation. ...