Charlotte Nakhla is a sophomore in Lowell House studying some combination of government, philosophy, and statistics. Her aim is to ask clear questions, mainly: “What do we mean by that?” and “How do we know?”
Over her second semester, she began to look for less hand-wavy language and more conversations where students (and professors!) challenge themselves willingly. She hopes to see Intellectual Vitality play a more concrete role at Harvard.
On Campus, Charlotte is involved with The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments—which constantly reminds her that we have never been as certain as we like to say. (How absurd of you to deny the Ether!) Most of us instinctively start from a belief and then aim to justify it, but she sees that, if we are to learn anything in College, it should be how to break that habit—how to go from evidence to belief.
But: how do we judge good evidence? What about models? What makes an argument more or less strong? What makes a claim justifiable in the first place? These are hard questions. Still, (much to the dismay of truth-relativists), we can, and have, gotten to some answers. If you want to think through these or other unfinished thoughts, Charlotte is happy to meet over coffee.