Abstract
It all goes back to the early 1960s, I guess.
I was an undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania, nominally majoring in biology but in fact majoring in extracurricular activities—which included journalism (The Daily Pennsylvanian), student activism, and studying butterflies. I took a BA, not a BS, and satisfied my language requirement with French, which I had pursued in high school. Not that I had any concept of potential future utility for my French; it was just the path of least resistance. And it fed into the philosophical preoccupations of the day. After all, Jean-Paul Sartre was French, n’est-ce pas?
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Soren Kierkegaard
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Shapiro, A. (2015). Contingency. In: Dyer, L., Forister, M. (eds) The Lives of Lepidopterists. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20457-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20457-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-20456-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-20457-4
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)