“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and getteth understanding.” A tribute to Dann Siems.

In everyone’s life, there are a few people who stand above others in how they have shaped one’s life. Not to make comparisons to other people, but my mental life has been radically changed by a few outstanding teachers I had in college. I was very lucky in that three professors took me under their wing, brought me to different conferences around the country, and invited me to help them write a book and game about Darwin and the rise of Naturalism in the 19th century. The mix of people initially struck me as odd: Marsha Driscoll is a psychologist and Roman Catholic; Elizabeth Dunn is an American Historian and Episcopalian; Dann Siems is a environmental biologist specializing in the fresh water of Northern Minnesota, and an atheist/pantheist/universalist (depending on the current stage of his ever-evolving thoughts); and I was a philosophy student most interested in the 17th century Dutch-Jewish philosopher Spinoza and the ancient Greek Heraclitus and an agnostic/atheist.

But after spending some time with them, I realized that we made a marvelous team. Marsha, Elizabeth and Dann are all exceedingly intelligent, sociable, and enjoy a great debate and discussion. Their temperaments were different but well matched: Elizabeth is a hard-nosed researcher and committed to the details in an historical environment; Marsha’s mind possessed perhaps the most William-James-esque open-mindedness, sharpness and jovial playing of paradigms I have ever encountered; Dann was perhaps the most intensely idea-oriented, collegially argumentative, and certainly the most scientifically minded of the group. At the same time, they all shared each of these traits. I mention the religions because in the creation of the Darwin game, these differences might make someone scratch their head in confusion. But for us, it did nothing but add to the rich diversity and complexity of our conversation, maintained an open-mindedness while tempering our ideas with stern critical thought.

My first “thick” experience with the team came in March of 2004, when they invited me to Athens, Georgia to take part in a “Reacting to the Past” conference–something that has taken a very prominent place in my intellectual and teaching life. I can’t remember why we were so lucky, but our team was housed in a beautiful bed-and-breakfast Victorian-age house. Dann and I shared a room for a few days (and even a bed!). I didn’t know him well at the time, but that would change over the next few days.

As the youngest one of the team, I figured that I would be the one staying up late every night, exploring the city and hanging out with the few other young people on attending the conference. How wrong I was. Every night, after dinner, our team, along with a one or two other people from the conference, sat in the indoor balcony and expressed our enthusiasm for the Athens and Anne Hutchinson games. Long after I would have otherwise gone to bed, Dann’s intensity of conversation kept us awake until the early morning hours. The pedagogy was a new way of teaching and learning, and the possibilities for how we could implement it in future projects stirred our imagination. We argued not only about the new mode of teaching, but about the ideas presented in the game itself. For those of you who are unfamiliar, the game basically involves role-playing historical characters in watershed moments of history, such as the end of the Greek Peloponnesian War and the trial of Socrates.. Emotions have a tendency to run high, which, within the context of the idea-driven game, only serves to magnify our interest in the ideas. Throughout the night, and immediately at the breakfast table, our conversations were infused with arguments about strategy, arguments, dealing with other players; and we were amazed at how lively it made our thinking about old ideas run. Similar experiences were repeated again and again during our annual trips to Barnard College in New York City at the annual Reacting conference there.

Dann was always a battery of thought in our team. His mind was “on” at all times, and at just about every moment I spent with him, he would share some new idea he had about, well, anything. He was a great synthesizer of knowledge, drawing comparisons and lessons from Athens and Puritan Boston to understand scientific and social issues of the modern day and other stages of history and scientific paradigms.  While Elizabeth, Marsha and I would argue with him, and often believed he was overlooking something important or attacked a problem with an strange conception of the model, he probably did more to stir thought than any one of us– and considering Elizabeth’s and Marsha’s contribution, that is saying quite a bit.

For the two or three years following that conference, our team met frequently to create the Darwin game. Creating the game was not about merely dividing and delegating duties. It grew in a very organic way. We watched it move from a very basic skeleton to something incredibly rich and diverse. It was an amazing process to partake in: Marsha and Elizabeth were our backbone, for certain, but Dann’s lightning mind, wide research, and ingenious contributions gave a special life to the game. Without him, the game would be relatively stale, I think.

I regret that my connection with him waned since I moved to Chicago. I appreciated him immensely, and as I stepped into the world of my graduate education and teaching, he was on my mind often. But I am a horrible long-distance communicator, a bad habit that is perhaps a symptom of never having lost anyone close to me in my entire life. I of course recognize that we are all mortal, and that we all die, but I have never had to confront this reality at a deep emotional level. My habits are entrenched in the idea that there will always be time for communication later. But there won’t be.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to see him last June when I traveled to Bemidji, just in time for a fundraiser for Dann. At that time, his prognosis was already grim. But he was well enough to attend the fundraiser and I was able to see him, thank him, and shake his hand one last time. He seemed tired and somewhat overwhelmed, but I hope he understood how much I appreciated him. I am not sure.

One memory that will always remain with me is a fairly mundane one. I was in the science building of Bemidji State University, Sattgast Hall. I encountered Dann in the stairway, and he stopped me to tell me about a new article he had read regarding pantheism and Darwinism. He had known I was a fan of Spinoza, who is arguably a pantheist himself. I had always known Dann as an atheist: he was a known terror on campus toward the Evangelical Fundamentalist Christians, a group of people I think we both considered inane in their absolute poverty of reasoning, logical consistency, and the profoundly negative affect it has on their views on education and society. But this article had seemed to explode his previous conceptions of what “the higher” could be. We had a great conversation, that mostly involved him explaining the article to me, but it was very interesting as the biology used in the article was in an interesting harmony with both Spinoza’s and Darwin’s theories: a link that I wanted to eventually establish but wasn’t sure how to at the time. It strikes me as an apposite memory of him: always ready to discuss ideas, connecting them both to his own interests and yours, willing to overthrow what he had previously thought for a more compelling idea if it should arrive, reveling in the conversation, and finding meaning in the community of thinkers.

Spinoza, the most influential philosopher on my own way of thinking, constructed a metaphysical and epistemological system that gave life to ideas: that ideas still worked and existed in no less a way than that of the life belonging to physical organisms– a sort of early-enlightenment version of memes, come to think of it. As I have seen the ways in which I think, teach, and write mature and change, I know that Dann’s influence on me remains, that many of his ideas are still living whenever I exercise my own, that when I teach and talk to my students, a part of him is teaching and talking to my students as well. For Spinoza, we are both ideas and bodies, and so long as our ideas are still persevering and growing, then we still live in an important sense.  I know, from countless conversations and the recent outpouring of messages left on Facebook and his memorial webpage, that the influence Dann has had on innumerable people, both students and friends, is immeasurable.

Whenever I think about Dann or Darwin, I will think about the other.  When Darwin was laid to rest at Westminster Abbey, the choir sung a piece based on Proverbs 3: “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and getteth understanding.”

How happy you must have been…