Massimo Pigliucci's New Project

Massimo Pigliucci, the biologist-turned-philosopher and long time author of the Rationally Speaking blog and host of the Rationally Speaking podcast, has recently closed the RS shop and started a new blog venture: Scientia Salon. There's not much there yet, but it's got all the trappings of greatness. Pigliucci's opening post is a manifesto about, in essence, the responsibility of public intellectuals, and names just the sort of people who did, have done, and are doing really top notch work.

I'd urge you to check out the site quite generally, but the manifesto itself (shorn of introduction), is brief and worth quoting in full:

1) Scientia Salon is a forum for academic and non-academic thinkers who do not shy from the label “public intellectual.”
2) We think intellectualism — in the broader sense of a publicly shared life of the mind — is crucial to the wellbeing of our society.
3) We acknowledge — as is clear from research in the cognitive sciences — that human beings navigate the world by deploying a complex mixture of reason and emotion, and that they often engage in rationalization more than rationality.
4) Indeed, we think with David Hume that this is a crucial part of human nature, since emotions are necessary in order to actually care about anything in the first place.
5) But we also think that open and reasoned discourse is fundamental for the pursuit of a eudaimonic life on the part of the individual, as well as for the development of a just and democratic society.
6) Scientia, understood as the broadest range of scientific and humanistic disciplines that positively contribute to human understanding, is an essential tool for pursuing that eudaimonic life and achieving that just society.
7) In order to make an impact, we think that writers concerned with these matters ought to aim at a wide audience, avoid unnecessary jargon, and write clearly and engagingly, even humorously when appropriate.
8) We therefore welcome authors and readers who are willing to contribute honestly and substantively to an open dialogue on all matters of the intellect, especially those of general interest to fellow human beings.