Page |147 on-going conversation that we have . 1 Ci! come to recognize as being centered on gsten etki“ instanceedges, Ef E potential led “ied loneliness} Connections :"e pam{ individuals, unseen forces that shape, and are shaped ~yeeresee-individual religioh ceanotherl a. by, the social nature of human beings. value Sundar Seg 1 = connection" Ouse “O different The essays that make up this volume poe a3 5 nm fOTCE STs ciencea Ge givea hint as to what our conversation oe ae zreatonbehuman make SEP sc has been like, but the linear structure that fully scientific OW eee ysical 2nthropomorphism & S84 | . prereset a eat Br | a book imposes cannot fully evoke the ‘ ; give and take of vigorous debate, the Chapter 16°° excitement of viewing an old problem Evil from a new perspective, or the progue satisfaction that comes from sharing the Over the past six years, our search for knowledge — even when we network of scholars has engaged in an did not agree on the interpretation of what we discovered in our search. 16 F . The lead author is Ronald Thisted, Ph.D., a We deliberately chose to describe Professor in the Departments of Health Studies, our menibershio as. a network rather than Statistics, and Anesthesia & Critical Care at the : Pp : University of Chicago, where he currently chairs a committee, or seminar, oF task force, or the Department of Health Studies. Trained in club, or salon. A network is defined as philosophy and mathematics at Pomona College much by the connections between people and in statistics at Stanford University, his as it is by the individual people interests mclude the nature of argument and . ; themselves. Networks can be described evidence, particularly in the context of health, ; ; : disease, and medical treatment. He has pictorially as nodes (points that represent published articles on topics ranging from individuals), some of which are treatment for back pain to computational connected by edges (lines that represent mathematics, and from soc