Menas Kafatos and Carmichael Peters, both from Chapman were excellent. I appreciated their openness with regard to accepting the knowledge and opinion of others. The underlying topics relating to this discussion are quite broad and for anyone to claim that what they know should exclude what others may claim to know is troubling.

I found Leonard Mlodinow to be very cordial and intelligent but very narrow minded. The manner in which he discusses the importance of empiricism and verification is blind in the context of his own work. There are aspects of quantum mechanics and string theory that are impossible to verify and validate. He does a linguistic dance around this topic when he is asked questions about his own work or the work of physicists in general.

A lack of openness to the possibilities of what may be gleaned from “science on the fringe” does little to further true scientific exploration. As was pointed out…Einstein was once on the fringe. Looking backward, most of the scientific positions were eventually proven wrong and replaced by new findings. This fact should provide a more humble basis for openness to the opinions and research of others but it seems that egos get in the way.