In the course of reflecting on the issues dealt with in this book, I was reminded of an incident that took place when I was in the fifth or sixth grade during my elementary education. One of my elementary school's graduates had gone on to Harvard to do a Ph.D. with David Riesman, the renowned sociologist. For his Ph.D., he was studying how various groups in society viewed scientists. Toward that end, he administered a questionnaire to all the students in my grade asking us a variety of questions, essentially aimed at detecting whether children viewed scientists as markedly different from other people. The only question I remember was the following: What is a scientist most likely to do while on vacation – study a new science, work on research, or do what other people do? I recall thinking, “Well, scientists are human, just like everyone else, so they do what all people do – spend time with family, travel, etc.” The graduate student called me out of class a week later, after processing the data, and informed me that I had the best understanding of how scientists behave and asked me to further elaborate on my answers. I remember explaining that people's humanness took precedence over their occupations – how could it not?

Years later, in reading Hume, I recalled my opinion, and had it buttressed when Hume said, in essence, that one can be a philosopher (or scientist) but one must be first a man.