숑샘 숑샘

❶ Convictions feel certain.❷ But not everything we feel certain about is a conviction.❸ I don’t need conviction for anything I’m absolutely or logically certain about.❹ When René Descartes declared he was certain that he thinks and exists (popularly, but erroneously, understood as the inference “I think, therefore I am”), he meant he couldn’t actively doubt he was thinking at that moment — becau..

❶ Strengths are contextual.❷ Any personal quality can be either an aptitude or a handicap, depending on the situation.❸ Let’s say you have difficulty reading printed text.❹ This might understandably seem like a shortcoming, especially if you want to be a literary critic, a profession heavily dependent on the parsing of texts.❺ But if you want to be an astronomer, the same apparent shortcoming co..

❶ A director of a play has a peculiar job.❷ For weeks, she orchestrates every move made by various people in a variety of roles, from actors to support personnel.❸ Little happens without her intervention in one way or another.❹ When the play opens, however, the director is essentially useless.❺ If the cast and crew still need her, she is a failure.❻ Teaching is, or at least ought to be, like tha..

❶ The idea that we can cultivate the soul or the self like a garden goes back to ancient times and is beginning to be applied to the brain in contemporary science.❷ It is, of course, replacing one metaphor with another but we cannot think in any sophisticated way without metaphors.❸ Furthermore, this one is more accurate.❹ The cells that create our neural networks grow in the form of tree-like b..