To: Jeffresteevacationajgmail.com] From: Brian Boyd Sent Mon 5/14/2012 3:39:05 AM Subject: RE: Re: Stanislas Dehaene ), a Professor at the College de France, and director of Neurospin, as well as author of The Number Sense, is certainly first rate. He began his training as a mathematician (as you'd see from Wikipedia) but the work he's known for has focused on how the brain processes number and letters in math and reading, and how evolved aspects of the brain, which clearly did not evolve for these very recent functions, have been "recycled," as he puts it, for these new uses. If these things interest you, he da man. Maybe Martin could become interested in the math of neuroscience (and also the neuroscience of math), if he's not already! B From: Jeffrey [mailto:jeevacation©gmail.com) Sent: Tuesday, 15 May 2012 7:49 a.m. To: Brian Boyd Subject: Re: I'm in Paris , if you think there is a person of interest Sorry for all the typos .Sent from my iPhone On May 13, 2012, at 6:21 PM, Brian Boyd wrote: As I think I told you, the Radcliffe literature and biology workshop I attended just before meeting you was for me rather flat, not up with the play. My best two days were the next, meeting you, Martin, and Howard Gardner in the morning, and spending the evening with Naomi Pierce of the Museum of Comparative Zoology and her biologist friends, and the next day talking to Martin, speaking in his institute, and attending the Society of Fellows dinner with him and Naomi. Martin is certainly dazzling, voracious, and delightfully quirky. Whether he will be able to do anything mathematical with literature I'm not sure he knows, after pumping me, but I'm happy to help if he can think of concrete mathematical ways into literature or culture more generally. The rest of the trip was mostly scenic and social except for the Consilience conference in St. Louis, where it was good to talk, albeit briefly, to Ed Wilson, and to hear especially Robert Frank,