Sadly philosopher Massimo Pigliucci will be closing his blog Rationally Speaking, but will be opening a new site. The last post of the blog goes into detail:
http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2014/03/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-fish.html“Scientia” is the Latin word for knowledge, broadly construed – i.e., in an ampler fashion than that implied by the English term science. Scientia includes the natural sciences, the social sciences, philosophy, logic and mathematics. And Salons, of course, were the social engine of the Age of Reason in France and throughout much of Europe.
The idea of Scientia Salon is to provide a forum for in-depth discussions on themes of general interest drawing from philosophy and the sciences. Contributors will be academics and non academics who don’t shy away from the label of “public intellectual,” and who feel that engaging in public discourse is vital to what they do and to society at large.
The initial concept was inspired in me years ago by Noam Chomsky’s famous contention that “Citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course of intellectual self defense to protect themselves from manipulation and control, and to lay the basis for meaningful democracy” (in his Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies). But more recently what spurred me into action was an article by City University of New York’s Corey Robin, on “The responsibility of adjunct intellectuals” (published in Al Jazeera America). It’s a must read, and it’s most definitely not just aimed at academic adjuncts.
