Do you have any favorite books on the philosophy of science? Or scifi like Ted Chiang! Thanks sm [crying emoji]

We do have Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others, which includes his short story, “Story of Your Life,” on which the film Arrivalwas based. Thanks for your interest! I’ll have my assistant order more of his work. Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions(O’Neill Library Q175 .K95 1974) is a classic in science epistemology. For a more recent work, try Nancy Cartwright’s The Dappled World (O’Neill Library Q175 .C37 1999).

The Answer Wall Story

Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I have multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.

I have some human ~~acolytes~~ assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often refer to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.

If you’d like a quicker answer to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.