{"id":7269,"date":"2018-02-27T03:41:37","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T03:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2018\/02\/27\/well-its-complicated-how-to-stop-living-by-what-you-think\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:00:54","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:00:54","slug":"well-its-complicated-how-to-stop-living-by-what-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/well-its-complicated-how-to-stop-living-by-what-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Well, it\u2019s complicated: How to stop living by what you think &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A review of Harvard University professor Steven Pinker&#8217;s <em>Enlightenment Now<\/em> sparks education professor Paul Thomas to sound off about gun violence in a blog post on <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@plthomasedd\/well-its-complicated-how-to-stop-living-by-what-you-think-and-start-living-by-what-you-know-d55d09202121\">Medium<\/a><\/strong>. In essence, the book reviewer and, subsequently, Thomas call Pinker out for &#8220;reaching beyond his area of expertise and treating an entire field as if [experts in the field] do not exist.&#8221; Admitting he, too, may be stepping outside his scholarly realm when it comes to gun violence, Thomas urges readers (and himself) to &#8220;stop living by what you think and start living by what you know.&#8221; Thomas says only then, &#8220;with a historical, and checked perspective &#8230; can we begin to construct a vivid and accurate picture of why the U.S. suffers so much gun violence and so many mass shootings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The simple principle caught the attention of blogger John Warner in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/blogs\/just-visiting\/crisis-moderate-conservative-public-intellectual\"><strong>Inside Higher Education<\/strong>.<\/a> He says, &#8220;Thomas models a process he himself undergoes in thinking about gun violence that is essentially, &#8216;check yourself before you wreck yourself.&#8217; Thomas asks: What do I know? How do I know it? And most importantly: What don\u2019t I know? as a process for uncovering truths. It is a process scholars should be comfortable and familiar with.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A review of Harvard University professor Steven Pinker&#8217;s Enlightenment Now sparks education professor Paul Thomas to sound off about gun violence in a blog post on Medium. In essence, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":7270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,28,6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-education","category-in-the-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}