Higher Education Observer

I had an interesting experience last semester. In a lecture on perception, I mentioned (because I had been reading so) that people with autism (my brother has it) do not perceive less than others, but they perceive more and that their behaviors are to block out or filter or deal with the overload. One boy in the back of the room said, "I know that's true because I'm autistic and .... " That's one of those "moments of truth." I often do not handle them well, but this one I did. Since the young man had not done anything that indicated autism to me (other than being nerdy), after he talked about himself I said, "Do you have Asperger's?" to which he said, "Yes, and ADD." Another young man in the class was giving me signals that he was in the same boat. There is something ironic and yet appropriate about this incident--only a student with Asperger's or Austism Spectrum Disorder would just announce it so boldly in class. ...

The 18th and 19th Centuries As usual, the text does what it does very well but eliminates some crucial elements of this period, called The Age of Reason or The Age of Enlightenment. This study guide is designed to guide you through what in the book you will be held responsible to know (that is, what I want to emphasize) and will at the end do the same in reference to the PowerPoint, which as you see is simplified but still important. The Age of Reason actually started about 1680 with Isaac Newton’s work called Principia Mathematica and with the English Glorious Revolution. One of the ideas Newton and his contemporaries proposed was that the world, nature, or natural phenomena were measurable and could be recorded in mathematical formulas. If measurable, then it was understandable and controllable. Nature was now the primary field of study, as opposed to human beings alone; human beings were increasingly being seen as a part of nature, not separate from it (as Christianity taught)....