David Pruett, James Madison University emeritus professor of mathematics, recently argued in a Suter Science Seminar that particles as basic as electrons and photons may have at least some elemental consciousness and free will.

Evolution, then, is a distilling process that concentrates elemental consciousness into higher consciousness in the more complex organisms such as humans, Pruett said, acknowledging the views of scientist-priest Teilhard de Chardin.

Pruett’s lecture “Reason and Wonder” took its title from his 2012 book (Praeger). The work was the result of a celebrated honors undergraduate course that Pruett developed and taught six times at JMU, “From Black Elk to Black Holes—Tales of a Mysterious Universe.” The book has earned a CHOICE Award from the American Library Association.

A former NASA researcher and award-winning computational scientist, Pruett has been teaching at JMU since 1996 and at several institutions before that. He blogs regularly about science, climate, religion, and politics at . His views of reason, faith and identity have also been featured in a lengthy with peacebuilder Yago Abeledo, ’14.

Pruett began his lecture by describing the accomplishments of Isaac Newton. This well-known scientist “contributed more to modern science than any other single individual,” said Pruett. Newton’s book, Principia Mathematica, describes mechanics, calculus, fluid mechanics, and the applications of these principals. One application includes the orbit of planets around the sun.

Despite his achievements, Newton was a humble man. He famously claimed that “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Pruett explained that these “giants,” who established the foundation that Newton built on, were scientists, including Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler.

Copernicus is well known for rejecting the idea that the planets and stars revolved around the earth. He opposed the church-supported geocentric model and proposed a heliocentric model. Galileo further rejected ancient beliefs by perfecting a telescope and turning it heavenward. He saw craters on the moon and moons around Jupiter, unquestioningly proving that not everything revolved around earth. Kepler further supported Copernicus by making careful measurements of the celestial motions.

After explaining the history behind the science, Pruett took a philosophical turn. He mentioned that Newton’s ideas encouraged the idea of determinism. Determinism suggests that, if an intelligent being knew the location, velocity, and force of every single particle in the universe, that being would be able to precisely predict the future. In other words, the future would be determined by the laws of nature. There would be no room for free will.

Pruett then claimed that modern science has invalidated determinism. On the atomic level, particles can act in very strange ways. He used the example of radioactive decay: if you have a collection of identical atoms, you can predict the rate at which the aggregate decays.

But “you cannot predict when an individual atom will decay,” said Pruett. “You can only find the probability.”

Pruett further discussed the relevance of this idea to human freedom. If elementary particles are undetermined, how can one claim that the universe is deterministic? Pruett extensively cited de Chardin, describing cosmology and evolution as processes involved in creating higher consciousness.

Pruett said he felt liberated to share what he calls “somewhat unorthodox views”after reading the titles of the other Suter seminars. Such an environment didn’t force him to “play it safe” for his audience of approximately 60 students and faculty.

The Suter Science Seminar series consists of 17 expert presentations – averaging two per month – during the fall and spring semesters. Visit for information about future talks.

The attention from one of the most heavily trafficked blog curations on the web wasn’t totally unexpected. Baer’s July 9 post about the stresses of balancing career and parenthood had gone viral, with more than a million hits on her blog, .

But still, at a time when Baer says she was struggling, more than she usually does, to be patient with her professional goals and the fact that she wasn’t achieving them due to “trying to get a toddler to poop and an infant to sleep,” well
here, at last, was an email affirming that the former English major and aspiring memoirist was, indeed, moving forward.

“I sat and stared at the screen, trying to figure out how to write back in all capital letters, ‘OBVIOUSLY, YES, YOU ARE MAKING MY LIFE,’ without sounding desperate,” Baer remembered.

Then the mother of two, tired and tightly wound herself, didn’t fall asleep for several hours.

It’s exactly that feeling she describes in the post, an anti-paean to motherhood that begins, “It is the unwashed dishes. The dirty kitchen sink. The four baskets of clean laundry being scattered over the crumb flavored carpet by a drunk toddler
”

So stressed she cannot sleep or find the energy to think, let alone to write, Baer finds solace in the multitudes of other mothers facing the same challenges.

We shame ourselves into thinking we’re the only ones who are overwhelmed, who cry in the bathroom, who sit in the grocery store parking lot as a ‘vacation.’
 I see you
We are in this together. You and me and the 42-year-old mother at the library who has finally had that baby after twelve years of trying but still feels tightly wound at the end of the day.

The post eventually garnered more than 216,000 likes and 15,000 shares on Facebook. The comments from her readers equaled hers in honesty. One mother wrote that she was sitting in her car in the driveway, reading Baer’s words and sobbing. Another asked, “Are you living in my house?” Many older mothers shared both joy at being parents, but guilt at wanting to be free from responsibility.

“I think parents want their feelings validated,” Baer said, reflecting about her post from her home in Pennsylvania which she shares with husband, J. Austin Baer ’06, son Waylon, 3, and daughter Eva, 8 months. “There’s a lot of glorification of ‘doing it all’ despite what everyone knows is the truth, that we can’t do it all. There is also a loss of community in many circles that has left a pretty deep void and it is always a relief to know we’re in this together.”

“In this together” are three important words for Baer, who first started blogging (and graciously answering every reader’s comments, until recently) in 2011 with a “mommy blog” called Motley Mama. Thirty weeks pregnant, she had just been let go from her job at a bankrupt non-profit.

“So I did what any other millennial girl with an would do,” she writes in a celebrating her three-year anniversary. “I started a blog.”

“Motley Mama” provided the stay-at-home mom with a reason to practice her craft. When Baer felt like she’d outgrown its title and format, she created the current forum, where she writes about the highs and lows of parenting, from trimester tips (“How to Dress a Large Mammal,” “How to Eat Your Weight in Sandwiches”) to bonding with a second child, postpartum depression, potty training, and television for kids.

But she makes regular and humorous observations about life with a perpetual student (her husband is in his fourth year of medical school), books, writing, holidays, swearing, church and technology.

Baer says her recent success on Huffington Post briefly threw her off balance: she didn’t write for two weeks after the “Tightly Wound” post went viral, “paralyzed” by the pressure and fearful that her “tiny success” was a fluke.

Yet her first post back, about her experience with daughter Eva called “,” was picked up by Huff Post Parents. She is now a contributing writer.

With her readership now blossoming to 30,000 hits a day, Baer is realistic about her sudden notoriety. She still hasn’t made a penny from her three-year-journey into the blogosphere, though she’s now selling ad space on her website.

“If my goal was to make any money writing, I would have surely given up by now,” she said. “The amount of time, effort, and physical turmoil it takes me to write a sentence would never be worth a paycheck.”

Reflecting on long-term goals, Baer says she’s bound and determined to publish “one measly book, so I can die an author.”

And in the meantime, there’s manna to sustain her: the she gives—and gets—from her growing community of readers “in this together.”

“Antoinette Tuff is a national hero,” wrote Schirch, who is affiliated with 91¶ÌÊÓÆ”’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. “Her story must be shared, passed onto future generations.”

Titling her commentary Schirch pointed out that “learning to talk down a gunman is not some top-secret strategy. FBI agents learn how to talk down gunman. They use the same skills we teach in conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Listen, ask questions, share stories, show compassion.”

Schirch is also the founding director of the human security program under the Alliance for Peacebuilding based in Washington D.C.

A columnist in the Washington Post, Petula Dvorak, drew from Antoinette Tuff’s sympathetic manner of speaking to the gunman, saying: “Are you listening to her, America? Her 911 call — listen to the whole thing; it’s riveting — is a portrait of poise, compassion and selflessness. She was exactly what America is forgetting to be.”