Office: 204 Gildemeister Hall

Telephone: 507.457.5567

E-Mail: bperatt@winona.edu

Web Page: course1.winona.edu/bperatt/personal

Field of Study: Dynamical Systems, Complex Analysis

Professional Goals & Interests:

• More Nerds!  To introduce students to the joy of being a geek and the freedom that comes from unleashing your inner nerd!

• More Chaos!  To provide the students that I serve with a productive learning environment and access to current developments in the field of mathematics, particularly Nonlinear Dynamical Systems.
• More Diversity!  This word has come to mean forced assent to a politically-correct ideological creed.  I seek to reclaim this word in academia by being a pesky, politically-incorrect gadfly.  Neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night shall stay this academician from proclaiming “inconvenient truths,” to borrow a phrase or two.  As those who dare to differ from the status quo---and suffer all manner of calumny because of it---increase in number, we will move toward some much needed diversity and fresh air on this campus.

• More Tolerance!  Again, another word that has been butchered beyond recognition and has taken on fascist overtones in academia.  People need to be exposed in tangible ways to the radical notion that reasonable, good, well-informed people can disagree and still remain friends.  Therefore, I seek to maintain friends with whom I strenuously disagree about really important things!  There was a time not so long ago that this was widely considered a “liberal” idea.  Now it is simply an unacceptable one.  Disagreement now equals hatred, and the expression of dissenting points of view creates a “hostile environment,” or so we are told.  Sounds like thought control to me.
• More Faith & Reason!  All scientific study is performed under philosophical assumptions.  One current guiding philosophy is that the universe has evolved to its present state solely through the unguided interplay of natural laws.  In contrast to this view, I accept natural laws and the mechanisms of contingency as secondary causes, but I maintain that the formation of the universe was purposefully willed and guided by a Creator, who serves as its sustainer and primary cause.  It is our job as scientists to serve humanity by increasing our understanding and fostering our stewardship of this orderly and lawful universe in which we reside.  The unnatural divorce of faith from reason has resulted in two unhealthy extremes: secularism and fundamentalism.  Only in marriage can faith and reason each produce in fullness the fruit which is their natural heritage.